This story, adapted from My Name Is Rand, originally appeared in the collection Love Under Foot, edited by Greg Wharton and M. Christian and published by Haworth Press in 2004.
The novel My Name Is Rand was originally published by Suspect Thoughts Press in 2004, and is currently available in a Lethe Press edition.
NOTE: This excerpt contains intense m/m tickle torture as well as gay sex acts. All characters are over age 18, but if you are offended by m/m tickling or gay sex, please DO NOT READ.
BREAKING THE CODE
by Wayne Courtois
When the boys were through, the men in gray coveralls put me, still naked, in a room by myself.
I didn’t know this at first. I couldn’t open my eyes, and my ears were still ringing with the shouts of boys and my own screaming. For hours sensation had seared me, rendering me fit for nothing but howling and tearing at my restraints.
I slept, and when I woke I did open my eyes. The room had three cots in it, a table and two chairs, and a counter with a sink, a small refrigerator, and a microwave. The yellow walls and orange scoop chairs reminded me of an employee break room in some outpost of industry. To come back from the ride I’d been on—and the coming back was a miracle, I knew that much—to a room as plain and dumb as this one struck me as hilarious. “They’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said out loud, in a voice that squeaked and croaked.
I opened the refrigerator and found plastic bottles of water and fruit juice. My hands were still trembling and the tomato juice was almost too heavy to lift. Once I got a grip on it, my knees started to go. I’d moved too quickly, stood up too fast, and now I sank to the floor. I lay on my back on the linoleum, staring at the strip of fluorescent lights overhead.
The room, the cots, the refrigerator, even the tomato juice—it was all familiar. I had been in this room before. As soon as I got up the strength, I stood and pulled open a door that was painted the same yellow as the wall, right down to the doorknob. Inside, a toilet and sink and shower stall, which I knew would be there.
I drank the tomato juice, and from a bowl on a table I took an apple. I sat in one of the chairs, but it wasn’t comfortable enough to ease my aching ribs, so I perched on the edge of a cot. Now I could see something I hadn’t noticed before, on the counter next to the refrigerator: a feather duster, of all things--a ridiculous feather duster with a white plastic handle. The feathers looked synthetic, dyed an orange color that lived nowhere in nature.
My memory had it this way: I had been brought to this place in the morning. First I had been turned over to the children, then the men and women had taken charge of me, then the horny teenaged boys. Then I had been pushed into this room. But I had seen this room before. Therefore, this wasn’t my first day here.
How long had it been? A few days? A week? A month?
It was hard to keep thoughts together. Very carefully I stretched out on the cot and closed my eyes.
Next thing I knew the door was being unlocked. A wave of dread swept over me: they were coming for me again. But as I raised my head another naked man was pushed into the room, the door shutting swiftly behind him. A young black man, he crumpled to the floor, twitching and moaning, his arms and legs trembling. When he rolled onto his back I saw the whites of his eyes under his half-open eyelids. His lips were swollen and parched, and he made a sound like heavy breathing or panting which I soon recognized as laughter—the almost silent, insane, unstoppable laughter of a man who had been mercilessly tickled by many hands for a very long time.
I regarded my new cellmate with fascination and pity. I knew there had to be other captives at the Compound; one victim would never be enough for this crowd. But I couldn’t recall seeing another captive or sharing a room with one. Of course they took no risk in throwing us in together: even three or four of us wouldn’t have the collective strength to cause trouble. I could barely stand up, and this new man couldn’t do even that. Covered with sweat and cum, he might have just been released from the same gang who had worked me over.
When I seemed to have enough strength I sat up, slowly, and swung my legs over the side of the cot. I walked—baby steps, but at least it was walking—to the sink and filled a paper cup with cool water. I tried to carry it to my cellmate without spilling any, but my hand still trembled and I lost a few drops.
“Here,” I said, lowering myself painfully to the floor. “Here’s some water.”
I might as well have been talking to myself, he was still in a deep delirium. Getting back on my feet was as difficult as squatting down but I managed it, then stood there holding the cup of water, not knowing what to do. Would his helpless whispered laughter ever stop? Finally I couldn’t look at his tortured face any longer, the unseeing eyes, the parched lips. I tilted the cup and let the water pour down onto his face.
That jolted him, brought his dark eyes into view. They scanned the room, and his relief was so great to find that he wasn’t being tickled anymore that he led his head fall back to the floor, untwisted his tangled legs and began slowly waving his arms up and down, like a kid making snow angels. I knew how he felt: the red marks from the restraints around his wrists were still vivid, and it felt so good to be free.
“I’ll get you some more water.” I filled the cup again, and as I brought it back he seemed to comprehend me for the first time. His narrowed gaze and cautious smile made me think that he’d never run into another captive, either. He took the water in his trembling right hand, gulped it down, and raised the cup, his eyes asking for more.
When I came back he was in a sitting position, looking at me with questions he couldn’t find words for. He drank, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and managed to ask, “How long you been here?”
I shook my head. “I’ve been trying to figure that out myself, just now. I was thinking I’d only been here a day—one incredibly long day—but now I think it’s been longer.”
“Oh, man.” His voice was still little more than a broken whisper. “I think I’ve been here a long time, too, but I ain’t sure anymore. My mind”—he made a few circles with his index finger at his temple—“it comes and goes. You know?”
“I know. What’s your name? I’m Rand.”
“Duke.” Wincing, he raised a huge hand. The hand trembled but his grip was strong. He had the build of a tight end, which didn’t save him from having to learn the hard way that strength was no defense against ticklishness.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
He shook his head sadly. “Dude named Granger.”
“Granger?” It was the first time I’d heard that name spoken by anyone else.
He continued to shake his head. “Oh, yeah. I saw his ad. Thought about it for weeks. I didn’t know what to do, but every time I pictured … what he said he’d do, my dick would just about bust through my shorts.”
“I was the same way.”
He looked up at me as if I didn’t understand. “No, you see…it started with my sisters. My two older sisters. All my life, while I was growing up, they used to tickle the shit out of me.”
“Well, I never had sisters or brothers,” I said, “but I guess you’re bound to be tormented sooner or later, if you’re real ticklish.”
“Ticklish? Shit! I’m more than ticklish.” He was still shaking his head as he talked, and I wondered if he had gone through his whole life that way, looking down, shaking his head. “I’m fuckin’ disabled, that’s how ticklish I am. Didn’t take my sisters long to find out, either. See, they used to babysit for me. My folks would be going out all the time, and the minute we were alone Brenda and Janessa would have me down on the floor—stripped naked, man, they didn’t give a shit—and start ticklin’ me all over and never stop, no matter how much I screamed and shouted.”
As if it had heard its name, his dick twitched just a bit. I had tried not to look, or at least not to be obvious about it. But the more I glanced at his long, smooth, circumcised dick, the more I wanted it. I ran my hand across my mouth and stepped back, feeling my own much-abused dick start to twitch.
“When I grew up, and Brenda moved away from home, then it was just Janessa. Then it was Janessa and her boyfriend Duane. She got him into it big time. Sunday afternoons they used to tie me to their bed and tickle me for hours. All three of us naked. Sometimes Janessa would jack me off, like both my sisters always used to do, but that Duane, he liked a little more than that. He’d lay on top of me, suck my dick while he’s tickling my ribs, and Janessa at the foot of the bed tickling my feet. Sometimes she’d tickle Duane’s feet too. Man, Janessa tickling Duane’s feet, telling him to tickle me harder if he wanted her to stop, and he’s digging into my ribs and suckin’ my dick, the three of us tremblin’ and shakin’… shakin’ like we’re about to blow.”
By now I couldn’t hide my erect prick. I knew, I knew that deadly passion for being tickled, and could picture those three beautiful black people whipping themselves into a frenzy. Exhausted as he was, Duke’s prick was getting hard too, curving up from his groin; so I wasn’t totally ashamed to say, softly, “Sounds hot.”
His eyes looked off as he shook his head. “Hot? Shit! It was so hot I don’t know why we didn’t fuckin’ melt.”
“Sheer torture, but it turned you on anyway.”
“Oh, hell yeah.” He reached down and stroked his dick, just once, like giving minimal attention to a pet that was showing off. “But Janessa and Duane split up a few years ago, and she moved away and he got into some other shit…so I knew what to do when I saw Granger’s write-up. My dick told me what to do.”
I didn’t want to think about Granger or the events of the past…few days? A week? Two weeks? Instead I let myself look at Duke, naked, spread out at my feet. For a black man he was quite hairy, a thick pelt spread across his pecs. His beard and mustache were overgrown, but if I squinted I could see how he must have worn them once, trimmed close, setting off his sensual lips.
I raised a hand to my chin and discovered, much to my surprise, that I had a beard too. A few days? A week? A month? When had I last seen myself? I had no idea. Somewhere even in that stupid, sterile room there should have been a reflection, some surface to give me back at least a part of myself. I checked the tiny bathroom again to make sure: no mirror. Nothing on the counter, either, except the blank dark face of the microwave. I was turning back toward Duke, ready to try to find some way to ask him how I looked, when we heard it.
It was a scream. A scream that ripped my spine out and packed ice in its place. As we stared at each other Duke's mouth sagged, his face lengthened into a melancholy look that seemed, weirdly, to suit him, and his voice deepened with despair.
“They’re gonna tickle us to death, man,” he said.
All the strength bled from my knees, and instead of helping him up I was sinking, sinking to the floor by his side, my head spinning. “Wait,” I said. “Wait, wait….”
His eyes rolled in panic. “Oh, man, we’re gonna die.”
“Shut up. Shut up for a minute.” I was as scared as he was, but talking about it would only make it worse. “We’re not gonna die. We can get out of here.”
Duke shook his head. There were tears in his eyes now. “Shows how much you know. Ain’t you seen the guards?”
“I haven’t seen anything but grinning faces and hands.”
“Well, you’ll see.” He raised himself onto his elbows so he could look at me without straining his neck. “I’m not talking about the guys in the gray overalls. They’re—what you call it—trusties. I’m talking about the dudes in camouflage. With rifles, man. As if that fence wasn’t enough, with all that razor wire shit along the top.”
I saw what Duke described, dim memories surfacing. Barbs of razor wire against a blue summer sky. “Don’t,” I told him. “Don’t talk about that stuff.”
“Man, don’t let ‘em catch you.” He blinked, looked around the room as if there was some menace lurking even here. “We shouldn’t even be talking like this.”
As much as his paranoia fed my own, it also made me angry. I swatted at the air in frustration. “We’re already fucking prisoners, what more could they do?”
“I’m telling you.” With some effort his raised his head higher. “I ain’t told you yet, but here it is. There was this dude who tried to escape, see….”
In my agitation I interrupted him again. “Who? Did you know him?”
“Naw, I just heard about him from this other guy I was put in with once, like I was just put in with you. Anyway, the dude tried to escape, and they caught him, those guys with the camouflage and shit. They did the worst to him.”
“What?” God Almighty, what could be worse than what we’d already suffered? I pictured bayonets tearing at flesh, a naked man shred to pieces.
He swallowed, hard. “They turned him over to Junior.”
That name stirred some association in my fevered brain, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Who’s that?”
“Dred Junior,” Duke said. “Sometimes they just call him Junior.”
One drop of sweat trickled down my back. Dred Junior. Junior. “Jesus Christ.”
“Man, once they put you in with that crazy fucker, nobody ever sees you again.”
“Is he really crazy?”
Duke nodded, slowly. “They say he’s kept in a straitjacket all the time, except when somebody’s brought to him--down where he stays, in a cellar. He picks up where the rest of ‘em leave off, it’s that intense. And there’s screaming like you never heard before.”
If I weren’t already on the floor I would have sunk to my knees. Even my stomach felt weak under the weight of what little I’d eaten. “How do you know all this?”
“That guy I was put in with that one time? Name of Franklin? Poor kid, he was only nineteen.” Duke’s voice, already weak, sank to a whisper. “He was one of them.”
“One of…?”
“He was one of the crackers. Just another farmboy, like the rest of them, except he must have done something really bad. They turned on him, made him one of us.”
One of them. One of us. It was the language of war, of terror; and it was our language now, mine and Duke’s, the only kind of talk that made sense here. But war and terror also meant strategy. “Maybe this kid Franklin was just a plant,” I said. “Maybe they were trying to psych you out by putting him in with you.”
“Naw, man. He wasn’t no plant.”
“How do you know?”
“’Cause he died. He died, man. That’s all I can tell you.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. Duke looked as miserable as I felt, but we had moved close enough for my bare leg to touch his. Even in these bizarre circumstances I was grateful for the intimacy; and I thought of how, in another life, Duke and I might have…. He looked up at me again and swallowed hard, and I was ashamed of myself for letting my thoughts drift. Duke had been here longer than me, had been tortured more than me. He was a wreck.
“I want to ask you something,” he said now. His ask sounded like ax.
“What is it?”
“I’m dead serious, man. Believe me?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
He swallowed again, as if words kept getting caught in this throat. Finally he said, “I want you to do it.”
“Do what?” Even as I asked, my spine went cold again. “What are you talking about?”
He didn’t speak till he was sure my eyes were meeting his. “I want you to do it,” he said again, but this time he spread his arms, just slightly, revealing more of his tender sides, his ribs, his armpits—leaving no doubt about what he was asking. “Tickle me to death, man.”
I jumped as if he’d thrown off fire. “Jesus Christ!”
He stirred, agitated by panic and need. “Do it, man,” he said. “Do it! I’m half dead already, and I’d rather have you finish me off than those motherfuckers out there.”
“Chrissakes, you don’t know what you’re saying.” Still shaky, I got to my feet. It was urgent, very urgent that I put some distance between us and, at least for now, not even look at him.
“I do know what I’m saying. You’re different from those sons of bitches.”
“Well, then, how can you ask…?”
“You could do it … as a kindness.”
I had to look at him then. “Torture is torture, Duke. It’s cruel either way.”
“No, it ain’t.” His eyes were begging. “Listen to me. There’s a place … they all know about it, even the little kids. That’s the spot that’ll kill me someday. But you could do it now. Put me out of my fucking misery.”
“You’re talking crazy.”
“But don’t you see? They keep damn near killing me, time after time, but they let me live so they can torture me some more. Help me, man!”
No one with a heart could ignore his desperation. Still I turned away. “No. I can’t do it.”
More silence. For the first time I wished I’d never laid eyes on Duke. I sat on the edge of my cot—how revolting, my cot, as if I belonged here, as if anything in this place was mine—and stared at the floor. Finally I said, "You should get some rest. Grab one of these cots." I stretched out and closed my eyes, hoping for a few moments of oblivion before they came for me again.
“You could do it,” he said.
I didn’t open my eyes. “Don’t bother me.”
“I know you could. Because I could. I did.”
I looked at him then, but he had turned his head, as if in shame. “What did you do?” I asked.
“That kid, Franklin. I tickled him to death.”
“Bullshit!”
“No, man. I had to do it. He begged me.” He turned his eyes toward mine, and they were too sad, too genuine to doubt. “They were going to turn him over to Dred Junior. He couldn’t stand the thought of it, it was driving him fucking crazy.”
“Jesus Christ, Duke.”
“I used my nails on his soles till they bled.”
“Oh, Christ.” I didn’t know if Duke meant it was the kid’s feet or his own fingernails that had bled. I didn’t want to know.
“Please,” Duke said. “I’m begging you, just like he begged me.” Though it was difficult, maybe even painful, Duke rolled over on his side and reached out, as if he were only asking me to help him up. “They know, man. They know I killed Franklin. They ain’t said anything, but God help me, I think they might turn me over to Junior. I can’t take it!”
I turned to face the wall, wishing the cot had a blanket I could pull up over my head. “I’ve got enough to think about now to give me nightmares for the rest of my life. Thanks a whole fucking lot.”
Silence. Then Duke mumbled something like “Okay,” and the subject was closed. My eyes were closed, too, and I was trying to clear my mind, to think of nothing, when he spoke again.
“Oh, I get it,” he said.
“Get some rest, for Christ’s sake.”
“You don’t like black.”
“What?” Amid all the horror and disgust and fear, I was surprised to find anger surfacing again.
“You don’t want to help a black man.” A sneer in his voice now. “You’re just another cracker.”
I rolled over and stretched out my arm, aiming a warning finger at him. “You don’t want to be saying that. Really, you don’t.”
“Why not? It’s the damn truth, cracker!”
I raised my admonishing finger and rubbed my temple with it. It wasn’t good, the way my blood was stirring. “You really, really don’t want to be saying this.”
“One more nigger in trouble, one more point for whitey.”
“God damn it!” Tired as I was, it was enough to get me on my feet again. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Why do you think I went to Granger in the first place? It’s because I’m crazy about black guys, I’m fucking helpless about them. Always have been.” Seeing that sneer on his lips, I got down on the floor again, right by his side. “And you, you’re….”
“What? Say it!”
“You’re…beautiful.” I reached out then, I had to touch him, had to. Very lightly I grazed his side with my fingertip.
His whole body quivered. In a different, desperate voice he cried out: “Oh shit, don’t do that!”
“Sorry….” Yet I couldn’t keep from touching him again, in just the same way. I loved the look of it, my white fingers against the deep, deep color of his skin. Again he shook, and he wasn’t putting it on: he really was that ticklish. With both hands I tickled along either side of his navel, and he erupted into full-fledged giggles that rose in pitch as my fingers played all over his hard abs.
“I get it now,” I told him. “You were just baiting me, weren’t you? You were trying to get me mad, so I would tickle you. Admit it!”
“No! Naw man, no…!”
“Admit it!” I moved my fingers to his groin, where his beautiful black cock was lengthening, thickening as I tickled on either side of it, down to his balls, to his inner thighs. “You were trying to get me mad on purpose!”
He was laughing so hard he couldn’t speak, but shook his head in denial. It made me furious, but even in my angered state I was getting turned on as well. I had never tickled a man before, not like this. I watched, as if from afar, as I crawled down the floor towards his feet.
“No, man!” It was all he could do to speak. “Not my feet!”
“Yes, your feet, motherfucker!” I lay atop his legs and gave my fingernails the run of his soles. The effect was immediate, I felt the jolts going through him as he gave in to full-throated laughter. “Are you gonna admit now that you made me mad on purpose?”
Panting, he shook his head “No.”
“Okay then.” I got up, went to the small bathroom, took a washcloth and moistened it under the tap. When I returned he was still panting from the last attack. “You were laughing a little too loud, my friend,” I told him as I stuffed the cloth into his mouth. “This will take care of that.”
He resisted, but soon enough I had stuffed the cloth completely into his mouth as his eyes widened with fear. When I turned back to his feet again I was moaning from both anger and lust. I wanted his black feet, more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I attacked his soles with my fingertips again while I used my tongue on his toes. Soon I had them in my mouth, sucking on each one as if my life depended on it. The smell of his feet, a smell that was both clean and sweaty, drove me mad.
Duke was too weak to struggle, too weak to even try to take the gag from his mouth. But he was shaking all over from his stifled laughter, his fists flopping uselessly on the floor. As I stepped up the intensity, licking and even biting the soles of his feet now, he was not only laughing but screaming.
“You haven’t felt anything yet,” I said. The transformation was now complete, I had become someone else, a crazy man with a hard dick and fingers itching for wild, sustained tickling. My thighs trembled as I straddled him and reached my fingers deep, deep into his armpits. “I’ll tickle you the way your sisters tickled you. The way your sister and her boyfriend tickled you, when you were tied up and helpless. They weren’t crackers, were they?”
Tears ran down his cheeks as I buried my fingers deep in his pits, the flesh searing hot, the tightly coiled hairs teasing the ticklishness of my own fingertips as I worked them hard. Panic filled his eyes, panic that grew as his muffled screams grew in volume and he could do nothing more than sway weakly back and forth, like a rocking chair losing its momentum.
“And what about me, Duke? You want to be put out of your misery, but who’s going to help me? I ought to just keep tickling you, man, just like they do—tickling you to death, only not quite. Over and over, never stopping….”
His face was a mask of fear and agony. The gag distending his cheeks made him look even more grotesque. It got even worse as I moved my hands down a bit, toward his upper ribs. His fingers stretched and spread, they would do anything to stop me, but he couldn’t even lift his hands from the floor. Yet his dick was hard, yearning towards his belly.
“You will move those hands,” I told him. “You’re going to bring yourself off. Or else.”
I kept tickling his ribs as his weak, trembling right hand found his dick. Grasping it seemed to take extreme effort.
“I remember what you told me. There’s one spot that’ll kill you. But I’m not even trying yet. You’re going to cum first.”
He shook his head violently.
“Do it! Come on!”
Slowly his hand began to pump his cock. To get a better view I moved down, down…to his feet. He couldn’t even clench his toes as I attacked his soles again, but through the gag he gave a little yelp of panic and started jacking faster. The more I tickled his feet, which were now so helpless they couldn’t move at all as I dug my nails into the soles, the faster he jacked himself off. As I watched him I saw Granger too, and all the other black men I had known in my life. Dark skin lustrous in streetlight leaking through a pulled shade, or glistening in the dimness of a bathhouse room. Smooth curved dicks with heads brown, pink or purple, swollen and ripe. Nipples clinging to a curve of muscle or hiding in coarse, tight curls. Navels like darker secrets in the darkness. Amid Duke’s muffled laughter and grunts of exertion as he worked his cock, I heard another sound and realized I was whimpering, whimpering and whining like a dog as I relived twenty years of desire and torment. And it was with a cry like a wounded dog that I left Duke’s feet and leaped toward the counter next to the fridge, grabbed up the ridiculous feather duster and leaped back at him, furiously tickling his balls as he came, his thick cream rising and falling to glaze his hands.
I was crying. Crying from exhaustion and madness. I rested my head on Duke’s thigh, felt half of my face sticking to him, my fingers still roaming that crotch that reeked of a lifetime’s worth of sweat and cum. When I finally unstuck my face and looked up at him, he was the same as when I’d first seen him, his head twitching, sightless eyes half closed.
“Okay, Duke,” I told him. “I’ll do it now, I promise. It should be easier now that you’ve cum. Maybe quicker, too.” I wiped my face with my forearm, trying to clear away tears and snot. “I don’t guess you need this now,” I said, pulling the washcloth from his mouth. “Just tell me the spot. Tell me where to go.”
I waited. It would take a while, my words rattling through his tortured consciousness, before he’d be able to give me a sign. When it came, it wasn’t his lips that moved but his arms, spreading slowly, bracketing his ribs. “Is that it, Duke? Somewhere on your ribs?” I thought I saw a flicker of assent in his nearly sightless eyes, but again it was his body that spoke, jarring as if a current passed through it as I probed his upper ribs, gradually increasing pressure. By now he was as helpless as a slab of meat on a butcher block, but he was still living meat, my fingers sending shocks through his system that were no less intense for his inability to make a sound. The merest twitch, the slightest tug at the corner of his mouth told me I was getting to him. I lay my head on his stomach, my ear pressing into cold sweat as I pushed deeper, deeper into his ribcage, deeper into a man’s body than I’d ever gone, seeking more than the mere connection between skin and nerve: it was the secret of life itself I was after, its hidden connection to the soul. I burrowed toward it like a man buried alive digging toward air. “This is it, Duke.” My teeth were clenched against the work I had to do, my fingers ached from pressing and twisting, but I couldn’t stop. It would be all over, any second now.
When I finally did stop it was because I had learned to listen to his body so well. True, it pulsed in agony, sent to hell by my tickling; but was I really taking him to the end? My mind raced over the brief time we’d spent together. When he’d accused me of bigotry he hadn’t meant it, he was trying to goad me into attacking him. Having broken that code, what puzzle did I have to solve now to give him what he needed? Nearly slipping on my sweaty palms, I heaved myself up to a sitting position. “It’s not your ribs after all, is it, Duke? You couldn’t quite bring yourself to tell me what that spot is … that fatal spot. You need me to find it myself.” His breath was hoarse. Soon it would be a death rattle. “Soon, soon,” I promised, touching his dry lips with my fingertip. “I’m going down to your feet again, Duke.”
His labored breath came more quickly as I stroked his soles, but I had to try something I hadn’t tried yet. I reached for the feather duster one last time and pulled out one of the larger, stiffer feathers. Holding his right foot in my left hand, I guided the feather in between the big and second toes--a spot I hadn’t reached before, not in this cruel way.
It rocked him as nothing else had. His feet came to life, struggling and flexing with surprising strength, desperate to protect the pink spaces between those slender toes. It didn’t matter. I put an armlock on his ankles and went to work. With his toes clenched I could still tickle his soles, he couldn’t flex them enough to totally escape my fingers. Scraping with my nails into the arches, around the heels, back toward the center of the soles, I felt I’d regained some of my old strength. I really could do it, I could tickle this man to death. “I’m not going to leave your feet, Duke,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’m going to keep tickling them, no matter what, till you let me get between those toes again.”
His burst of strength was fading. “That’s better,” I said as his feet began to relax, through no will of his own. “You know I’m going to get them, Duke. I’m getting between those toes. And that’ll be the end of you.” Soon enough I was doing it, working that big stiff feather into those tender crevices, twisting and pushing and pulling for maximum effect. He was weakening, weakening, and I didn’t know if I would ever be able to stop, even when it was finally all over for him.
“All right, that’s enough!”
They burst in on us, half a dozen of them or more.
These weren’t trusties but the serious ones, the guards, in their camos and black boots. They cussed as they moved over us, pulling me off Duke, dragging me to the opposite corner of the room. Kneeling around the body of the black man, asking each other, “Is he dead?” and one of them answering, “Naw, he ain’t dead. Not quite.”
Once they heard that Duke was still alive, the men holding me down started tickling me furiously, their practiced fingers nearly tearing my ribcage apart. “So, you want to tickle somebody to death, huh? Huh?” Their taunting wasn’t necessary, my screaming laughter and the tears streaming down my cheeks were proof that their tickling was destroying me—as if Duke’s ordeal, my merciless treatment of him, had made me even more ticklish.
Soon my feet were captured, fingers prying my toes back, exposing my soles to more fingers. The tickling short-circuited my brain, I couldn’t think of anything beyond begging them to stop as soon as I could draw a breath; but I was aware that they must have been watching Duke and me all the time. And from my vantage point as I lay on the floor with my head thrown back, I could see even through my tears a surveillance camera high in one corner of the room, something that anyone whose brains hadn’t been scrambled would have noticed much sooner. Yes, I had broken Duke’s code, found my way to the core of him; but breaking the code of this hellish place was more than any one tortured soul could manage.
The novel My Name Is Rand was originally published by Suspect Thoughts Press in 2004, and is currently available in a Lethe Press edition.
NOTE: This excerpt contains intense m/m tickle torture as well as gay sex acts. All characters are over age 18, but if you are offended by m/m tickling or gay sex, please DO NOT READ.
BREAKING THE CODE
by Wayne Courtois
When the boys were through, the men in gray coveralls put me, still naked, in a room by myself.
I didn’t know this at first. I couldn’t open my eyes, and my ears were still ringing with the shouts of boys and my own screaming. For hours sensation had seared me, rendering me fit for nothing but howling and tearing at my restraints.
I slept, and when I woke I did open my eyes. The room had three cots in it, a table and two chairs, and a counter with a sink, a small refrigerator, and a microwave. The yellow walls and orange scoop chairs reminded me of an employee break room in some outpost of industry. To come back from the ride I’d been on—and the coming back was a miracle, I knew that much—to a room as plain and dumb as this one struck me as hilarious. “They’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said out loud, in a voice that squeaked and croaked.
I opened the refrigerator and found plastic bottles of water and fruit juice. My hands were still trembling and the tomato juice was almost too heavy to lift. Once I got a grip on it, my knees started to go. I’d moved too quickly, stood up too fast, and now I sank to the floor. I lay on my back on the linoleum, staring at the strip of fluorescent lights overhead.
The room, the cots, the refrigerator, even the tomato juice—it was all familiar. I had been in this room before. As soon as I got up the strength, I stood and pulled open a door that was painted the same yellow as the wall, right down to the doorknob. Inside, a toilet and sink and shower stall, which I knew would be there.
I drank the tomato juice, and from a bowl on a table I took an apple. I sat in one of the chairs, but it wasn’t comfortable enough to ease my aching ribs, so I perched on the edge of a cot. Now I could see something I hadn’t noticed before, on the counter next to the refrigerator: a feather duster, of all things--a ridiculous feather duster with a white plastic handle. The feathers looked synthetic, dyed an orange color that lived nowhere in nature.
My memory had it this way: I had been brought to this place in the morning. First I had been turned over to the children, then the men and women had taken charge of me, then the horny teenaged boys. Then I had been pushed into this room. But I had seen this room before. Therefore, this wasn’t my first day here.
How long had it been? A few days? A week? A month?
It was hard to keep thoughts together. Very carefully I stretched out on the cot and closed my eyes.
Next thing I knew the door was being unlocked. A wave of dread swept over me: they were coming for me again. But as I raised my head another naked man was pushed into the room, the door shutting swiftly behind him. A young black man, he crumpled to the floor, twitching and moaning, his arms and legs trembling. When he rolled onto his back I saw the whites of his eyes under his half-open eyelids. His lips were swollen and parched, and he made a sound like heavy breathing or panting which I soon recognized as laughter—the almost silent, insane, unstoppable laughter of a man who had been mercilessly tickled by many hands for a very long time.
I regarded my new cellmate with fascination and pity. I knew there had to be other captives at the Compound; one victim would never be enough for this crowd. But I couldn’t recall seeing another captive or sharing a room with one. Of course they took no risk in throwing us in together: even three or four of us wouldn’t have the collective strength to cause trouble. I could barely stand up, and this new man couldn’t do even that. Covered with sweat and cum, he might have just been released from the same gang who had worked me over.
When I seemed to have enough strength I sat up, slowly, and swung my legs over the side of the cot. I walked—baby steps, but at least it was walking—to the sink and filled a paper cup with cool water. I tried to carry it to my cellmate without spilling any, but my hand still trembled and I lost a few drops.
“Here,” I said, lowering myself painfully to the floor. “Here’s some water.”
I might as well have been talking to myself, he was still in a deep delirium. Getting back on my feet was as difficult as squatting down but I managed it, then stood there holding the cup of water, not knowing what to do. Would his helpless whispered laughter ever stop? Finally I couldn’t look at his tortured face any longer, the unseeing eyes, the parched lips. I tilted the cup and let the water pour down onto his face.
That jolted him, brought his dark eyes into view. They scanned the room, and his relief was so great to find that he wasn’t being tickled anymore that he led his head fall back to the floor, untwisted his tangled legs and began slowly waving his arms up and down, like a kid making snow angels. I knew how he felt: the red marks from the restraints around his wrists were still vivid, and it felt so good to be free.
“I’ll get you some more water.” I filled the cup again, and as I brought it back he seemed to comprehend me for the first time. His narrowed gaze and cautious smile made me think that he’d never run into another captive, either. He took the water in his trembling right hand, gulped it down, and raised the cup, his eyes asking for more.
When I came back he was in a sitting position, looking at me with questions he couldn’t find words for. He drank, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and managed to ask, “How long you been here?”
I shook my head. “I’ve been trying to figure that out myself, just now. I was thinking I’d only been here a day—one incredibly long day—but now I think it’s been longer.”
“Oh, man.” His voice was still little more than a broken whisper. “I think I’ve been here a long time, too, but I ain’t sure anymore. My mind”—he made a few circles with his index finger at his temple—“it comes and goes. You know?”
“I know. What’s your name? I’m Rand.”
“Duke.” Wincing, he raised a huge hand. The hand trembled but his grip was strong. He had the build of a tight end, which didn’t save him from having to learn the hard way that strength was no defense against ticklishness.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
He shook his head sadly. “Dude named Granger.”
“Granger?” It was the first time I’d heard that name spoken by anyone else.
He continued to shake his head. “Oh, yeah. I saw his ad. Thought about it for weeks. I didn’t know what to do, but every time I pictured … what he said he’d do, my dick would just about bust through my shorts.”
“I was the same way.”
He looked up at me as if I didn’t understand. “No, you see…it started with my sisters. My two older sisters. All my life, while I was growing up, they used to tickle the shit out of me.”
“Well, I never had sisters or brothers,” I said, “but I guess you’re bound to be tormented sooner or later, if you’re real ticklish.”
“Ticklish? Shit! I’m more than ticklish.” He was still shaking his head as he talked, and I wondered if he had gone through his whole life that way, looking down, shaking his head. “I’m fuckin’ disabled, that’s how ticklish I am. Didn’t take my sisters long to find out, either. See, they used to babysit for me. My folks would be going out all the time, and the minute we were alone Brenda and Janessa would have me down on the floor—stripped naked, man, they didn’t give a shit—and start ticklin’ me all over and never stop, no matter how much I screamed and shouted.”
As if it had heard its name, his dick twitched just a bit. I had tried not to look, or at least not to be obvious about it. But the more I glanced at his long, smooth, circumcised dick, the more I wanted it. I ran my hand across my mouth and stepped back, feeling my own much-abused dick start to twitch.
“When I grew up, and Brenda moved away from home, then it was just Janessa. Then it was Janessa and her boyfriend Duane. She got him into it big time. Sunday afternoons they used to tie me to their bed and tickle me for hours. All three of us naked. Sometimes Janessa would jack me off, like both my sisters always used to do, but that Duane, he liked a little more than that. He’d lay on top of me, suck my dick while he’s tickling my ribs, and Janessa at the foot of the bed tickling my feet. Sometimes she’d tickle Duane’s feet too. Man, Janessa tickling Duane’s feet, telling him to tickle me harder if he wanted her to stop, and he’s digging into my ribs and suckin’ my dick, the three of us tremblin’ and shakin’… shakin’ like we’re about to blow.”
By now I couldn’t hide my erect prick. I knew, I knew that deadly passion for being tickled, and could picture those three beautiful black people whipping themselves into a frenzy. Exhausted as he was, Duke’s prick was getting hard too, curving up from his groin; so I wasn’t totally ashamed to say, softly, “Sounds hot.”
His eyes looked off as he shook his head. “Hot? Shit! It was so hot I don’t know why we didn’t fuckin’ melt.”
“Sheer torture, but it turned you on anyway.”
“Oh, hell yeah.” He reached down and stroked his dick, just once, like giving minimal attention to a pet that was showing off. “But Janessa and Duane split up a few years ago, and she moved away and he got into some other shit…so I knew what to do when I saw Granger’s write-up. My dick told me what to do.”
I didn’t want to think about Granger or the events of the past…few days? A week? Two weeks? Instead I let myself look at Duke, naked, spread out at my feet. For a black man he was quite hairy, a thick pelt spread across his pecs. His beard and mustache were overgrown, but if I squinted I could see how he must have worn them once, trimmed close, setting off his sensual lips.
I raised a hand to my chin and discovered, much to my surprise, that I had a beard too. A few days? A week? A month? When had I last seen myself? I had no idea. Somewhere even in that stupid, sterile room there should have been a reflection, some surface to give me back at least a part of myself. I checked the tiny bathroom again to make sure: no mirror. Nothing on the counter, either, except the blank dark face of the microwave. I was turning back toward Duke, ready to try to find some way to ask him how I looked, when we heard it.
It was a scream. A scream that ripped my spine out and packed ice in its place. As we stared at each other Duke's mouth sagged, his face lengthened into a melancholy look that seemed, weirdly, to suit him, and his voice deepened with despair.
“They’re gonna tickle us to death, man,” he said.
All the strength bled from my knees, and instead of helping him up I was sinking, sinking to the floor by his side, my head spinning. “Wait,” I said. “Wait, wait….”
His eyes rolled in panic. “Oh, man, we’re gonna die.”
“Shut up. Shut up for a minute.” I was as scared as he was, but talking about it would only make it worse. “We’re not gonna die. We can get out of here.”
Duke shook his head. There were tears in his eyes now. “Shows how much you know. Ain’t you seen the guards?”
“I haven’t seen anything but grinning faces and hands.”
“Well, you’ll see.” He raised himself onto his elbows so he could look at me without straining his neck. “I’m not talking about the guys in the gray overalls. They’re—what you call it—trusties. I’m talking about the dudes in camouflage. With rifles, man. As if that fence wasn’t enough, with all that razor wire shit along the top.”
I saw what Duke described, dim memories surfacing. Barbs of razor wire against a blue summer sky. “Don’t,” I told him. “Don’t talk about that stuff.”
“Man, don’t let ‘em catch you.” He blinked, looked around the room as if there was some menace lurking even here. “We shouldn’t even be talking like this.”
As much as his paranoia fed my own, it also made me angry. I swatted at the air in frustration. “We’re already fucking prisoners, what more could they do?”
“I’m telling you.” With some effort his raised his head higher. “I ain’t told you yet, but here it is. There was this dude who tried to escape, see….”
In my agitation I interrupted him again. “Who? Did you know him?”
“Naw, I just heard about him from this other guy I was put in with once, like I was just put in with you. Anyway, the dude tried to escape, and they caught him, those guys with the camouflage and shit. They did the worst to him.”
“What?” God Almighty, what could be worse than what we’d already suffered? I pictured bayonets tearing at flesh, a naked man shred to pieces.
He swallowed, hard. “They turned him over to Junior.”
That name stirred some association in my fevered brain, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Who’s that?”
“Dred Junior,” Duke said. “Sometimes they just call him Junior.”
One drop of sweat trickled down my back. Dred Junior. Junior. “Jesus Christ.”
“Man, once they put you in with that crazy fucker, nobody ever sees you again.”
“Is he really crazy?”
Duke nodded, slowly. “They say he’s kept in a straitjacket all the time, except when somebody’s brought to him--down where he stays, in a cellar. He picks up where the rest of ‘em leave off, it’s that intense. And there’s screaming like you never heard before.”
If I weren’t already on the floor I would have sunk to my knees. Even my stomach felt weak under the weight of what little I’d eaten. “How do you know all this?”
“That guy I was put in with that one time? Name of Franklin? Poor kid, he was only nineteen.” Duke’s voice, already weak, sank to a whisper. “He was one of them.”
“One of…?”
“He was one of the crackers. Just another farmboy, like the rest of them, except he must have done something really bad. They turned on him, made him one of us.”
One of them. One of us. It was the language of war, of terror; and it was our language now, mine and Duke’s, the only kind of talk that made sense here. But war and terror also meant strategy. “Maybe this kid Franklin was just a plant,” I said. “Maybe they were trying to psych you out by putting him in with you.”
“Naw, man. He wasn’t no plant.”
“How do you know?”
“’Cause he died. He died, man. That’s all I can tell you.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. Duke looked as miserable as I felt, but we had moved close enough for my bare leg to touch his. Even in these bizarre circumstances I was grateful for the intimacy; and I thought of how, in another life, Duke and I might have…. He looked up at me again and swallowed hard, and I was ashamed of myself for letting my thoughts drift. Duke had been here longer than me, had been tortured more than me. He was a wreck.
“I want to ask you something,” he said now. His ask sounded like ax.
“What is it?”
“I’m dead serious, man. Believe me?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
He swallowed again, as if words kept getting caught in this throat. Finally he said, “I want you to do it.”
“Do what?” Even as I asked, my spine went cold again. “What are you talking about?”
He didn’t speak till he was sure my eyes were meeting his. “I want you to do it,” he said again, but this time he spread his arms, just slightly, revealing more of his tender sides, his ribs, his armpits—leaving no doubt about what he was asking. “Tickle me to death, man.”
I jumped as if he’d thrown off fire. “Jesus Christ!”
He stirred, agitated by panic and need. “Do it, man,” he said. “Do it! I’m half dead already, and I’d rather have you finish me off than those motherfuckers out there.”
“Chrissakes, you don’t know what you’re saying.” Still shaky, I got to my feet. It was urgent, very urgent that I put some distance between us and, at least for now, not even look at him.
“I do know what I’m saying. You’re different from those sons of bitches.”
“Well, then, how can you ask…?”
“You could do it … as a kindness.”
I had to look at him then. “Torture is torture, Duke. It’s cruel either way.”
“No, it ain’t.” His eyes were begging. “Listen to me. There’s a place … they all know about it, even the little kids. That’s the spot that’ll kill me someday. But you could do it now. Put me out of my fucking misery.”
“You’re talking crazy.”
“But don’t you see? They keep damn near killing me, time after time, but they let me live so they can torture me some more. Help me, man!”
No one with a heart could ignore his desperation. Still I turned away. “No. I can’t do it.”
More silence. For the first time I wished I’d never laid eyes on Duke. I sat on the edge of my cot—how revolting, my cot, as if I belonged here, as if anything in this place was mine—and stared at the floor. Finally I said, "You should get some rest. Grab one of these cots." I stretched out and closed my eyes, hoping for a few moments of oblivion before they came for me again.
“You could do it,” he said.
I didn’t open my eyes. “Don’t bother me.”
“I know you could. Because I could. I did.”
I looked at him then, but he had turned his head, as if in shame. “What did you do?” I asked.
“That kid, Franklin. I tickled him to death.”
“Bullshit!”
“No, man. I had to do it. He begged me.” He turned his eyes toward mine, and they were too sad, too genuine to doubt. “They were going to turn him over to Dred Junior. He couldn’t stand the thought of it, it was driving him fucking crazy.”
“Jesus Christ, Duke.”
“I used my nails on his soles till they bled.”
“Oh, Christ.” I didn’t know if Duke meant it was the kid’s feet or his own fingernails that had bled. I didn’t want to know.
“Please,” Duke said. “I’m begging you, just like he begged me.” Though it was difficult, maybe even painful, Duke rolled over on his side and reached out, as if he were only asking me to help him up. “They know, man. They know I killed Franklin. They ain’t said anything, but God help me, I think they might turn me over to Junior. I can’t take it!”
I turned to face the wall, wishing the cot had a blanket I could pull up over my head. “I’ve got enough to think about now to give me nightmares for the rest of my life. Thanks a whole fucking lot.”
Silence. Then Duke mumbled something like “Okay,” and the subject was closed. My eyes were closed, too, and I was trying to clear my mind, to think of nothing, when he spoke again.
“Oh, I get it,” he said.
“Get some rest, for Christ’s sake.”
“You don’t like black.”
“What?” Amid all the horror and disgust and fear, I was surprised to find anger surfacing again.
“You don’t want to help a black man.” A sneer in his voice now. “You’re just another cracker.”
I rolled over and stretched out my arm, aiming a warning finger at him. “You don’t want to be saying that. Really, you don’t.”
“Why not? It’s the damn truth, cracker!”
I raised my admonishing finger and rubbed my temple with it. It wasn’t good, the way my blood was stirring. “You really, really don’t want to be saying this.”
“One more nigger in trouble, one more point for whitey.”
“God damn it!” Tired as I was, it was enough to get me on my feet again. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Why do you think I went to Granger in the first place? It’s because I’m crazy about black guys, I’m fucking helpless about them. Always have been.” Seeing that sneer on his lips, I got down on the floor again, right by his side. “And you, you’re….”
“What? Say it!”
“You’re…beautiful.” I reached out then, I had to touch him, had to. Very lightly I grazed his side with my fingertip.
His whole body quivered. In a different, desperate voice he cried out: “Oh shit, don’t do that!”
“Sorry….” Yet I couldn’t keep from touching him again, in just the same way. I loved the look of it, my white fingers against the deep, deep color of his skin. Again he shook, and he wasn’t putting it on: he really was that ticklish. With both hands I tickled along either side of his navel, and he erupted into full-fledged giggles that rose in pitch as my fingers played all over his hard abs.
“I get it now,” I told him. “You were just baiting me, weren’t you? You were trying to get me mad, so I would tickle you. Admit it!”
“No! Naw man, no…!”
“Admit it!” I moved my fingers to his groin, where his beautiful black cock was lengthening, thickening as I tickled on either side of it, down to his balls, to his inner thighs. “You were trying to get me mad on purpose!”
He was laughing so hard he couldn’t speak, but shook his head in denial. It made me furious, but even in my angered state I was getting turned on as well. I had never tickled a man before, not like this. I watched, as if from afar, as I crawled down the floor towards his feet.
“No, man!” It was all he could do to speak. “Not my feet!”
“Yes, your feet, motherfucker!” I lay atop his legs and gave my fingernails the run of his soles. The effect was immediate, I felt the jolts going through him as he gave in to full-throated laughter. “Are you gonna admit now that you made me mad on purpose?”
Panting, he shook his head “No.”
“Okay then.” I got up, went to the small bathroom, took a washcloth and moistened it under the tap. When I returned he was still panting from the last attack. “You were laughing a little too loud, my friend,” I told him as I stuffed the cloth into his mouth. “This will take care of that.”
He resisted, but soon enough I had stuffed the cloth completely into his mouth as his eyes widened with fear. When I turned back to his feet again I was moaning from both anger and lust. I wanted his black feet, more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I attacked his soles with my fingertips again while I used my tongue on his toes. Soon I had them in my mouth, sucking on each one as if my life depended on it. The smell of his feet, a smell that was both clean and sweaty, drove me mad.
Duke was too weak to struggle, too weak to even try to take the gag from his mouth. But he was shaking all over from his stifled laughter, his fists flopping uselessly on the floor. As I stepped up the intensity, licking and even biting the soles of his feet now, he was not only laughing but screaming.
“You haven’t felt anything yet,” I said. The transformation was now complete, I had become someone else, a crazy man with a hard dick and fingers itching for wild, sustained tickling. My thighs trembled as I straddled him and reached my fingers deep, deep into his armpits. “I’ll tickle you the way your sisters tickled you. The way your sister and her boyfriend tickled you, when you were tied up and helpless. They weren’t crackers, were they?”
Tears ran down his cheeks as I buried my fingers deep in his pits, the flesh searing hot, the tightly coiled hairs teasing the ticklishness of my own fingertips as I worked them hard. Panic filled his eyes, panic that grew as his muffled screams grew in volume and he could do nothing more than sway weakly back and forth, like a rocking chair losing its momentum.
“And what about me, Duke? You want to be put out of your misery, but who’s going to help me? I ought to just keep tickling you, man, just like they do—tickling you to death, only not quite. Over and over, never stopping….”
His face was a mask of fear and agony. The gag distending his cheeks made him look even more grotesque. It got even worse as I moved my hands down a bit, toward his upper ribs. His fingers stretched and spread, they would do anything to stop me, but he couldn’t even lift his hands from the floor. Yet his dick was hard, yearning towards his belly.
“You will move those hands,” I told him. “You’re going to bring yourself off. Or else.”
I kept tickling his ribs as his weak, trembling right hand found his dick. Grasping it seemed to take extreme effort.
“I remember what you told me. There’s one spot that’ll kill you. But I’m not even trying yet. You’re going to cum first.”
He shook his head violently.
“Do it! Come on!”
Slowly his hand began to pump his cock. To get a better view I moved down, down…to his feet. He couldn’t even clench his toes as I attacked his soles again, but through the gag he gave a little yelp of panic and started jacking faster. The more I tickled his feet, which were now so helpless they couldn’t move at all as I dug my nails into the soles, the faster he jacked himself off. As I watched him I saw Granger too, and all the other black men I had known in my life. Dark skin lustrous in streetlight leaking through a pulled shade, or glistening in the dimness of a bathhouse room. Smooth curved dicks with heads brown, pink or purple, swollen and ripe. Nipples clinging to a curve of muscle or hiding in coarse, tight curls. Navels like darker secrets in the darkness. Amid Duke’s muffled laughter and grunts of exertion as he worked his cock, I heard another sound and realized I was whimpering, whimpering and whining like a dog as I relived twenty years of desire and torment. And it was with a cry like a wounded dog that I left Duke’s feet and leaped toward the counter next to the fridge, grabbed up the ridiculous feather duster and leaped back at him, furiously tickling his balls as he came, his thick cream rising and falling to glaze his hands.
I was crying. Crying from exhaustion and madness. I rested my head on Duke’s thigh, felt half of my face sticking to him, my fingers still roaming that crotch that reeked of a lifetime’s worth of sweat and cum. When I finally unstuck my face and looked up at him, he was the same as when I’d first seen him, his head twitching, sightless eyes half closed.
“Okay, Duke,” I told him. “I’ll do it now, I promise. It should be easier now that you’ve cum. Maybe quicker, too.” I wiped my face with my forearm, trying to clear away tears and snot. “I don’t guess you need this now,” I said, pulling the washcloth from his mouth. “Just tell me the spot. Tell me where to go.”
I waited. It would take a while, my words rattling through his tortured consciousness, before he’d be able to give me a sign. When it came, it wasn’t his lips that moved but his arms, spreading slowly, bracketing his ribs. “Is that it, Duke? Somewhere on your ribs?” I thought I saw a flicker of assent in his nearly sightless eyes, but again it was his body that spoke, jarring as if a current passed through it as I probed his upper ribs, gradually increasing pressure. By now he was as helpless as a slab of meat on a butcher block, but he was still living meat, my fingers sending shocks through his system that were no less intense for his inability to make a sound. The merest twitch, the slightest tug at the corner of his mouth told me I was getting to him. I lay my head on his stomach, my ear pressing into cold sweat as I pushed deeper, deeper into his ribcage, deeper into a man’s body than I’d ever gone, seeking more than the mere connection between skin and nerve: it was the secret of life itself I was after, its hidden connection to the soul. I burrowed toward it like a man buried alive digging toward air. “This is it, Duke.” My teeth were clenched against the work I had to do, my fingers ached from pressing and twisting, but I couldn’t stop. It would be all over, any second now.
When I finally did stop it was because I had learned to listen to his body so well. True, it pulsed in agony, sent to hell by my tickling; but was I really taking him to the end? My mind raced over the brief time we’d spent together. When he’d accused me of bigotry he hadn’t meant it, he was trying to goad me into attacking him. Having broken that code, what puzzle did I have to solve now to give him what he needed? Nearly slipping on my sweaty palms, I heaved myself up to a sitting position. “It’s not your ribs after all, is it, Duke? You couldn’t quite bring yourself to tell me what that spot is … that fatal spot. You need me to find it myself.” His breath was hoarse. Soon it would be a death rattle. “Soon, soon,” I promised, touching his dry lips with my fingertip. “I’m going down to your feet again, Duke.”
His labored breath came more quickly as I stroked his soles, but I had to try something I hadn’t tried yet. I reached for the feather duster one last time and pulled out one of the larger, stiffer feathers. Holding his right foot in my left hand, I guided the feather in between the big and second toes--a spot I hadn’t reached before, not in this cruel way.
It rocked him as nothing else had. His feet came to life, struggling and flexing with surprising strength, desperate to protect the pink spaces between those slender toes. It didn’t matter. I put an armlock on his ankles and went to work. With his toes clenched I could still tickle his soles, he couldn’t flex them enough to totally escape my fingers. Scraping with my nails into the arches, around the heels, back toward the center of the soles, I felt I’d regained some of my old strength. I really could do it, I could tickle this man to death. “I’m not going to leave your feet, Duke,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’m going to keep tickling them, no matter what, till you let me get between those toes again.”
His burst of strength was fading. “That’s better,” I said as his feet began to relax, through no will of his own. “You know I’m going to get them, Duke. I’m getting between those toes. And that’ll be the end of you.” Soon enough I was doing it, working that big stiff feather into those tender crevices, twisting and pushing and pulling for maximum effect. He was weakening, weakening, and I didn’t know if I would ever be able to stop, even when it was finally all over for him.
“All right, that’s enough!”
They burst in on us, half a dozen of them or more.
These weren’t trusties but the serious ones, the guards, in their camos and black boots. They cussed as they moved over us, pulling me off Duke, dragging me to the opposite corner of the room. Kneeling around the body of the black man, asking each other, “Is he dead?” and one of them answering, “Naw, he ain’t dead. Not quite.”
Once they heard that Duke was still alive, the men holding me down started tickling me furiously, their practiced fingers nearly tearing my ribcage apart. “So, you want to tickle somebody to death, huh? Huh?” Their taunting wasn’t necessary, my screaming laughter and the tears streaming down my cheeks were proof that their tickling was destroying me—as if Duke’s ordeal, my merciless treatment of him, had made me even more ticklish.
Soon my feet were captured, fingers prying my toes back, exposing my soles to more fingers. The tickling short-circuited my brain, I couldn’t think of anything beyond begging them to stop as soon as I could draw a breath; but I was aware that they must have been watching Duke and me all the time. And from my vantage point as I lay on the floor with my head thrown back, I could see even through my tears a surveillance camera high in one corner of the room, something that anyone whose brains hadn’t been scrambled would have noticed much sooner. Yes, I had broken Duke’s code, found my way to the core of him; but breaking the code of this hellish place was more than any one tortured soul could manage.
