munchausen
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Annie's Tale (f/f, very adult)
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This is part of a project I've been working on. It's based in the same world as the Voyage Out series, but most of it dates from long ago in that world's history. It's pretty racy, so no-one under 18 should be reading it. Feedback is appreciated, as are suggestions.
[/I] The Journals of Hieronymous Meade
A catalogue of misadventures, observations, and interviews centering upon the general theme of mirth energy and its extraction
Compiled and edited by Professor Dahlia Bronwen
Editor’s Preface
{The following document, for all the years I and a core of assistants have devoted to assembling, editing, and compiling it, will inevitably read like a random assemblage of disconnected thoughts. This regrettable fact is attributable, in large part, to its principal author, the mysterious Hieronymous Meade himself. Meade was many things – jester, conman, voyeur, priapic, vagabond, sometime maniac, and, most importantly, perhaps the greatest scientist and mage in the history of our world. He is almost single-handedly to credit for the largest body of research and knowledge about mirth energy ever amassed, and all of us owe this unique and bizarre character an enormous debt. In addition, his works provide a remarkable travel narrative, as he spanned almost all of the continents of this world and her island planets, and provided unique insights about every one.
The following fragments comprise all that has yet been found of Meade’s obsessively maintained and detailed journals. They vary widely in form, tone, and content, though all published here bear significantly upon mirth energy in one way or another. Some read like simple comic anecdotes, others, like erotic literature, still others like clinical trials. Many recount the author’s own rakish adventures – others recount the stories that others told him about mirth-related topics, which he collected and recorded obsessively even if they bore only slightly on his current research. A disproportionate number of these come from women whom Meade designates in no uncertain terms as attractive, and often indicates that he has had relationships with. Intriguingly, the author’s propensity toward storytelling often keeps the specific scientific details to a kind of periphery – his specific scientific notes are collected in the lengthy appendices in this volume’s companion piece. Overall, what emerges here is a genre-defying work of literature: a complex portrait of a roguish genius and the research that made him legendary.
The excerpts appearing here are in no particular order, representing merely what my team and I have been able to decode from Meade’s maddening cryptography.}
Annie’s Tale
[In the course of my researches into Mirth Energy, the theme of tickling has understandably emerged again and again as one of the most dramatic and powerful ways of producing this mystical and elusive essence. I have accumulated, in the course of my research, a stunning array of tales that center on this subject, some of which relate directly to the production of power, others that simply make for interesting and diverting reading and suggest the variety of ways that this seemingly simple form of interaction has affected individual lives and even the course of history at various times. I have compiled these tales here, in my appendix, for future scholars, seekers of information, and for those in search of unique entertainment.
The first of these tales comes from Annie, one of the servant girls who was so essential in my earliest discovery of mirth crystals and their potential. I have described her elsewhere, but will reiterate here. Annie is a stunning, petite creature with emerald doe-eyes, shoulder-length, dark golden hair, and smooth, soft, brown skin gently kissed by the sun. Annie was a vision as she recounted her tale: she sat back upon my divan, long hair loose about her naked shoulders, clad in a simple brown dress that amplified the gifts with which nature had blessed her. I recall, as I tend to recall such things, that she was barefoot, sun-browned, pink-soled feet propped on an ottoman in front of her, crossed at the ankles, and at certain points in her story her toes would wiggle and curl, her soles flex and crinkle, as if to underscore appropriate points. She knew, of course, that this would drive me mad.
In any event, aside from her obvious and surprising eloquence, you will note the frankness and honesty here as she divulges a tale the details of which one might expect would be a source of embarrassment – a common theme in many of these stories. The freedom of expression that the reader will note in these tales, often told by those who would ordinarily be much more strait-laced, owes much to my scientific method. With the subjects’ permission, I gave each a draught which both heightened recall and lowered inhibitions–not of behavior, as such a thing would be grossly uncivilized, but in terms of speech. In the interest of science, my stalwart subjects were willing to imbibe it, and as a result provided utterly unguarded accounts of their experiences. The results are both scientifically valuable and, I must admit, frequently quite titillating. Annie, fairly uninhibited from the outset, was the first to partake of the draught – later imbibers were swayed by the weight of my scientific reputation. The rewards of my work are truly manifold.
In the interest of clarity, and of enhancing the tale, I should introduce some principals. One of these is Lord Horatio, the suitor to Lady Bethany whose efforts at wooing led directly to the events described. Another is Lady Bethany herself, a stunning, patrician beauty, with alabaster skin (dare I invoke such a cliche?) and gently tumbling nut-brown tresses to compliment her stunning, lean physique. Finally, there is the beguiling Samantha, the cook, somewhat older than the other two at perhaps forty, but a seasoned feast for the eyes: buxom and curvy, pert Celtic features, a heart-shaped pink face framed by full chestnut tresses, and always a hint of the temptress about her. The remainder of descriptions and events shall be in Annie’s own words.]
You want stories about tickling, then? Very well, if it will advance the cause of science as well as the swelling in your trousers, you naughty cad, I suppose I shall tell you a somewhat embarrassing story of my own experience in which it emerges as a kind of central theme, throughout. I suppose it began one morning in the late spring, as we were preparing the manor house for the visit of Lord Horatio, Lady Bethany’s principal beau. We had all been rushing about, cleaning and primping the manor house, as if he needed to be impressed by anything beyond Lady Bethany’s personal charms. I had just finished scrubbing all the bathchambers and showers [n.b.: For my legions of readers from outside our peculiar dimension, I should make clear that elements that would strike some as anachronisms are common in our world – in line with the sorceress’s design, our various lands and regions tend to maintain the more charming elements of particular historical eras, but with what will seem to others to be more contemporary conveniences] and went to the kitchens for a bit of a snack.
Removing my slippers so as not to spoil her sparkling floors, I entered the cavernous kitchen. I was greeted by a bumping and scraping from the far end of the vast, empty kitchen, which had recently been cleaned and mopped to sparkling by the dedicated toil of our dear Sam. Upon investigating, I discovered her engaged in cleaning the great iron stove. I couldn’t see much of her, as her head, shoulders and arms had vanished completely inside the monstrosity as she knelt to clean it. She worked assiduously, cursing in her scots brogue as she scoured the innards of the beast. It was a comical sight, her rear end protruding from that great iron beast, shaking with her vigorous scrubbings, and, I confess, prompted me to mischief.
As common sense dictated, Sam had been mopping and scrubbing the kitchen floors barefoot, and as she knelt cleaning the oven, resting on her heels, the pink crinkly bottoms of her big feet and her round, sturdy toes provided too tempting a target for me to resist. I crept up behind her and slowly stroked a fingernail down the center of one sole.
She let out a precious little squeal that echoed strikingly in the metal chamber; her foot jumped and her toes clenched and wriggled, trying to fight off the sensation. I expected a round cussing out, but she, realizing, I suppose, the helplessness of her position – she was almost completely inside the stove, packed in rather tightly, and would have had to sort of wriggle her way out in reverse – took immediately to a kind of frenzied begging quite out of character with her usual gruff toughness. “Oh, please, please don’t! I can’t stand that! Don’t be cruel to poor Sam!” I, of course, was only encouraged by her reaction, and continued my slow torture, drawing my nails delicately over her defenseless bare feet. She responded with breathless peals of giggles, shaking and shivering inside her iron prison.
I suppose I was foolish, in retrospect, for speaking at all – she could scarcely have guessed (though she would probably have had some idea) which of the manor staff was torturing her. Still, the mischief in me took over, and I started crooning to her. “Oh, my, who’d have thought, the gruff and tough Miss Sam has such tickly feet! Surely such a mature and confident woman can’t be as ticklish as all that!” I paused for a moment, taking each struggling toe in turn between thumb and forefinger and giving it a little wiggle. Granted a brief respite from all-out tickling by my toe-tugging, Sam gasped for breath, and spoke haltingly but threateningly from inside the stove.
“Annie...huff...I...swear, I’ll...gasp...get you for this...you little...”
“Uh, oh,” I said wickedly, as I reached the smallest toe of the second foot.
“You know what time it is, don’t you?”
“No...what are you talking about, you evil doxy...”
“Time for this little piggy to go wee wee wee all the way home!” I shouted, and attacked the bottoms of both her feet with a broadside burst of two-handed tickling.
She shrieked so loudly I jumped, and then she began to fairly roar with deep belly-laughter. Her defenseless feet tried to move, but had little opportunity – she crossed one over the other to the limited degree that she could, and kept switching them ineffectually as I gladly accepted each newly topmost sole as my primary tickling target, and invariably found it just as sensitive as its predecessor. When I felt particularly sadistic, I let her know just how helpless she was by grabbing both her big toes together in one hand and scrabbling my fingernails over the insides of both arches – which I imagined must be the most ticklish parts, given my own experience – with precision and vigor.
When I did this, she let out a bellow and her whole body jumped. I heard a great hollow “bang” from inside the stove, and realized she must have bumped her head on the inside top of the stove, at the base of the pipe. Scared she might have hurt herself, I laid off my tickling and took a few hurried steps back before asking, “Sam? Are you all right?”
I couldn’t control my own laughter when Sam slowly backed out of the stove. She frequently scrubbed the inside of it, but much less often did the bloke come around to clean out the pipe at the top; when she had bumped her head, a shower of black soot had come pouring down and covered her, head and shoulders, blackening the auburn ringlets that framed her pretty face. Her eyes glowed with anger from her sooty mask; for a moment, I thought she was going to come after me, and I danced away from her a bit, but she just pointed at me and spoke, in a trembling voice: “Annie Malloy, you’ve not heard the last o’ this!”
I blew her a kiss and ran away, and thought no more of it until the next evening.
Now before I get to the racy bit, I should tell you a little about Miss Bethany and her suitor. Lord Horatio had been calling on her for some months, and she had developed a love of teasing the poor man to distraction. She’s quite the tease, and I believe she would rather drive a man to blue-balls and pleasure herself over it afterwards than have a good rogering of her own. (I, of course, prefer the rogering, but can see the appeal of getting a good-looking bloke like yourself all hot and bothered first.) Anyhow, once we girls figured out what she was doing, we would delight in embarrassing the noble lord as well. We always managed to be outside in the hallway as he took his leave of her, hunched over his stiff prick and swollen bollocks. We even made a habit, when in our crueler moods, of knocking quickly on his door and barging in five minutes or so after he retired, and delighted in his red-faced attempts to hide that he had been “easing his tension” by his own hand. He’s quite the handsome man, if you like older chaps, and the one time that I waited a few moments longer and managed a glimpse of him trying frantically to hide his considerable member in the midst of a fountain-like crisis has given me an image that has carried me through to a few private moments of pleasure myself. I thought you’d like that – that’s made you shift a bit to make room in your trousers!
Anyhow, we knew that this evening she must have similar plans, and were all dead curious as to how she managed to drive him so mad without submitting to his desires. She strictly forbade any of us to disturb her in her salon between dinner and the hour when they would retire, so generally we had resigned ourselves that our curiosity would never be fully satisfied.
I, however, had developed a plan. I had discovered, days before, in pursuing a troublesome cat that had worked its way into the ventilation shafts, that I could climb up into the ductwork and crawl to virtually any area in the house. The shafts were quite wide, actually, giving me room to creep in on my belly and crawl along with about three inches to spare. I couldn’t turn around, but I could sidle along without oppressive claustrophobia or fear of getting stuck. Also, the frequent vents, their covers wrought of broadly spaced metal filigree, let in enough light to ease my travel, and allowed for fine views of individual rooms. I had told no-one about what I had found, and had faked illness earlier that day to get out of my duties. Your Annie Malloy is a curious one, particularly when it comes to matters of the bedroom, and if the mistress’s rules meant that I would have no relief save what I gave myself, I would at least see to it that the fires of my imagination were stoked by powerful fuel!
Now, as coincidence would have it, this tale is appropriate for your studies for a number of reasons – not just my torture of poor Sam. I’ll be getting to those directly – stay with me, now.
At any rate, I started my journey just after nine, about half an hour after Lady Bethany and Lord Horatio had retired to her salon. I imagined that by this point, her teasing would be in full swing. I had prepared for bed, donning my nightgown and brushing my hair, and made a point of informing the girls that I was retiring for the night, so none would pop in and check on me out of concern for my wellbeing. Now, the difficult part began.
The only way into the ductwork big enough for a person to climb into was the portion I had removed to go in after the cat – a portion in the upstairs broom closet, a location I had chosen because it would be out of sight of the company before I had any inkling of this plan. Dressed only in a white cotton nightgown, I peeked out the door to find the coast was clear, then crept barefoot down the hall into the broom closet, and closed the door behind me. Holding my breath, I boosted myself up into the ductwork as quietly as possible, relieved as the light in the shafts contrasted with the pitch darkness of the closet. Slowly, carefully, I inched my way along the shaft, counting vents as I went so that I did not have to check my progress visually and risk being spotted through a vent.
As I went, I became increasingly conscious of muted voices, one of which was unquestionably that of a man. It was virtually impossible to hear their conversations through the thick oaken doors of the salon, but here in the vent shaft, their voices carried rather well. I began to breathe more quickly in spite of myself, and found myself becoming rather hotly aroused at the prospect of what I would soon see and hear. I inched along, propelling myself on my belly by elbows, knees, and toes, thighs rubbing together in a quite agitating manner in my current state.
At last I reached the salon – as it turned out, it was served by a single vent at the dead end of the long corridor, directly in front of my face. I lowered myself to a resting position, fully prone, and ventured to peek through the vent at the scene below.
My vantage was perfect. The ceiling here was rather high, as the salon was on a slightly lower level than the rest of the ground floor. Lady Bethany and her beau were on a great, overstuffed sofa directly across the room from me – I had a perfect view of them, perhaps twenty feet away. The lighting in the room was soft, and cast me and my vent in fortuitous cloaking shadow. If all went well, I knew I shouldn’t be discovered.
It was immediately clear that Lady Bethany was teasing the poor man to distraction. She is quite lovely, my mistress – pale skin, patrician features, dark eyes, beautiful ringlets of dark hair that poured down her back in a cataract when she let them, as she did now. She was reclining in a position of purest luxury; she had removed her shoes and stockings, and her elegant bare feet rested in Horatio’s lap. He was massaging them with some kind of oil as she moaned and stretched, catlike, and regarded him with heavy-lidded, sensuous eyes. Her gown had shifted well up her lithe thighs, and her bodice had settled well down on her breasts, revealing her ivory gifts almost to the nipples.
The extremely agitated state of Horatio’s manhood was obvious even from my vantage point – the tight trousers still in fashion for the nobility are ill-suited for concealing erections, and Horatio’s bountiful gifts were certainly too much for them. Lady Bethany would occasionally allow her toes to brush along his straining shaft, or, in mid-stretch, allow the sole of a foot to rub softly against his bulging stones as he massaged away in exquisite torture.
“L-lady Bethany…I am a man of …some pride, as you know….and I am not given to…pleading with a woman, particularly on these matters. But I think we both know…that you are not withholding your charms from me based on (oh, God!) …virtue. A woman led by virtue does not …allow her beau to watch her pleasure herself, as you did during my last visit, to my admitted delight…A woman led by virtue does not drive a man to the brink of crisis with…aah…with her toes, on the pretext of receiving a simple massage.”
“What is your point, my darling?” Lady Bethany replied, kneading the head of his bursting member with her toes for a moment and robbing him of the power of speech.
“Errgh….aah…my point, my dearest, is that I…aah…believe you have been tormenting me on purpose, by accelerating degrees, for the past several months.”
“And what do you propose we do about that? Will you take me? Ravish me? A gentleman like yourself would certainly never stoop to such assaults on a lady’s virtue. Even a lady of such…questionable virtue as myself.” She poked his balls playfully with her toe, making him jump a bit in his seat.
Horatio was apoplectic – red-faced, hard as diamond, suffused with equal parts arousal and outrage. I was enjoying the spectacle immensely. He seemed trapped – he had expressed his anger, she had acknowledged, tacitly, the truth of his claim, and essentially told him he could do nothing but continue to submit.
I must confess I was totally unprepared for what he did next. Lady Bethany seemed no more prepared than I. Horatio, his eyes lit by a fire of desperation, seized both of her slender ankles under his arm. I expected him perhaps to thrust his raging member against her soles, to steal some sort of relief short of ravishing her thoroughly, but such was not his plan. He began, instead, wildly to tickle the bottoms of Lady Bethany’s tormenting bare feet.
Lady Bethany’s reaction was stunning. She contorted for a moment as if bitten by a serpent, her eyes and mouth wide with hilarious shock. Then she began to fairly scream with laughter, her aristocratic, bell-clear contralto forced into the service of her ticklish panic. Horatio’s fingers moved with blinding speed, gliding and scratching over Bethany’s long, slender, wrinkled soles, as her long, delicate toes clenched, splayed, and wiggled desperately. The look on her face was priceless – all traces of her smoldering, cool, confident seductiveness had vanished, replaced by a look of absolute shock and disbelief. She didn’t seem to believe what was happening to her, did not accept the sensations coming from the soles of her feet, was dumbfounded by the wracking gales of laughter forced from her even as they burst forth from her mouth. She yanked one foot free and kicked feebly at his back with it – he held the other all the tighter and tickled its bare bottom with new resolve until she slid from the couch, face redder than his had been throughout all her teasing, her look of shock now replaced by a broad, foolish grin, her formerly wide eyes now closed against the tears that poured down her cheeks. She shook with silent laughter, now, as he worked his way from the base of her toes down the center of her arch to her tender heel and back again. At last, amid wracking sobs, she managed to rasp, “I give!”
Horatio paused, regarding her uncertainly, still holding her ankle, fingertips poised for another assault on her vulnerable foot. “You…give?”
“Yes…I…give.” She was panting, her foolish grin remaining in place, as she lay exhausted on the floor, one leg still in his lap.
“You will, at last, yield to me? Oh, Bethany, you have…”
“Not entirely,” Bethany said, after taking advantage of his initial joy to yank her foot out of his grasp and rub its beleaguered bottom against the rug. “But I will yield in part. Unbutton your trousers and lower them.”
Trembling, he did as she said, too preoccupied to help her as she climbed back onto the couch. His member, now naked, stood large and proud; his balls heavy and swollen.
“Mmm…” said Bethany. “Now, sit down.” The command was back in her voice, now, and he did as she said, sitting at the end of the couch as before after spreading a handkerchief manfully over the cushion that would receive his naked backside.
“Now, just relax,” she cooed in a husky voice. He sat back, laying his head on the back of the couch, and closed his eyes. Lady Bethany lay back as before, when he was massaging her, and again extended her feet into his lap. This time, however, her bare lotion-slicked soles caressed his manhood in earnest, brushing over his swollen testicles, stroking his empurpled shaft, encircling his manhood and massaging it slowly, softly, between them. His face contorted into a rictus of passion, twisting in pleasure so intense it bordered on pain, as he pumped his hips gently into her caressing feet. He would not last long, I knew – my mistress seemed to know as well, as she delved a hand between her thighs and began unpretentiously and expeditiously stroking her quim through her sheer skirts.
I will confess – and this should be no surprise to you – that I was sorely tempted to do the same, right there in the ductwork. All that stopped me was fear of discovery by virtue of the noises I would make – unlike some women, I have a difficult time remaining quiet as I take my pleasure. So I remained still, quiet, flushed and burning with arousal, nipples hard and inner parts slick, as I watched them.
As I had predicted, the process was not a long one. First, my mistress came by her own hand in a dainty, ladylike gasping spasm. Then – as if he, gentleman to the last, were waiting her culmination before surrendering to his own – he let out a throaty cry as his cock began launching great glistening gouts of seed into the air and all over both of them. She, her podal dexterity unaffected by the ordeal of her orgasm, continued to stroke his blasting cock with one slick sole as she pressed with the great toe of her other foot just behind his throbbing balls. He, face warped into a grotesque mask of ineffable pleasure, must have discharged a gallon of semen, spurt by shuddering spurt, until he collapsed red-faced with a little ecstatic whinny.
They lay there, speechless and sated, soaked in his seed, for some time, and I decided the time was right to make my retreat and satisfy my own now-raging desires in the privacy of my bedchamber. I made up my mind to begin backing down the shaft – it was too narrow to allow for turning around, at least without making a considerable racket – when my heart leaped and my breath caught in my throat.
Something had tapped me on the ankle.
Panicked, but still determined to keep silent, I glanced back over my shoulder, hoping it wasn’t a rat (we had never had a rat in the manor, to my knowledge, but then again I had never spent much time crawling about in the ductwork). I saw only that the area just behind me was oddly illuminated from below. Reaching backward and feeling about with my toes, I found that a panel in the bottom of the ductwork immediately behind me had been stealthily removed, leaving an open space about two feet square. Someone had discovered me! I could see little more, craning my neck as I was, so I simply looked frontward and prayed for mercy. My mistress and her beau were still blessedly oblivious to my presence, recovering from their respective transports – I could only wait to discover the aims of my discoverer.
I found out soon enough, as in an instant I deduced both the identity of the new arrival and her aims. As I mentioned earlier, I had climbed into the ductwork barefoot – I was dressed in nightclothes anyway, and even if I had not been, I would probably have removed my shoes for the sake of stealth. Now, someone was taking advantage of my unfortunate wardrobe choice by holding my right ankle and stroking a sharp but smooth thumbnail slowly up and down the sole of my bare foot.
In the best of circumstances, I am devilishly ticklish – if a beau or girlfriend lays hold of my unshod feet in a roughhouse, it takes only seconds to reduce me to cackling surrender. But aroused and frightened as I was, my nerves all on edge, I was beyond the pale. Had she straight out tickled the bottoms of my feet full force, I would doubtless have shrieked and screamed immediately, giving myself away. But my tormentor was not so eager to end his her enjoyment.
I was utterly trapped, and my torturer knew it. The only way out would be to back down the shaft, and she could easily prevent me from doing so, as any real struggle on my part was sure to make sufficient noise to alert those in the room below. There was nothing I could do as she began my maltreatment. She tickled me with slow, light, maddening strokes, teasing my toes, tracing the wee wrinkles that lined my soles when I curled my toes against her tickling touches. I felt fit to burst – my teeth clenched, my eyes tiny slits, I shook with silent giggles, forced myself to quiet the jumps and twitches her tickles evoked. Still she toyed with me, delaying what I felt was the inevitable broadside onslaught of fingernails scribbling over my arches. She scratched a tiny spot on my heel so insistently that I thought I would scream, then eased slippery fingers between my flexing toes and simply held them there, there presence enough to make me a quivering nervous wreck. Every now and then she would allow a single finger to trace over the lengths of both my soles, reminding me of where I was truly, deathly ticklish, and promising things to come.
Tears were beginning to fill my eyes – I blinked them away and saw my lady and her beau in repose, her feet back in his lap as he cleaned them lovingly with a handkerchief. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, and it seemed they would soon retire. If only I could hold out until then…
The tormenting hands ceased for a moment, then began a childish, playful, and sickeningly familiar game, tugging on each of my toes in turn. My mind supplied the monologue: “This little piggy went to market….this little piggy stayed home…”
As she reached my smallest toe, I heard a soft whisper in Sam’s familiar, coarse Scots brogue. “Do ye know what time it is, Annie dear?”
I squinched up my face, clenched my teeth, and shut my eyes tight. I knew very well what time it would be. The bottoms of my poor feet had never felt so bare and vulnerable in my life.
Without finishing the narration, Sam attacked both of my soles at once with a devastating two-handed tickle, scribbling her short but effective nails over my heels, the balls of my feet, the pads of my toes, and, especially, and most terrible of all, the high hollows of my arches.
There would be no girlish giggles from this maid. I burst out immediately with bellowing, heaving peals of laughter – something along the lines of “BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!”
Like that, did you?
I believed my goose to be well and truly cooked, but could not even think rationally on my own potential ruin, so busy was I being tickled into mad hysterics. Sam had her little barefoot prankster trapped, and she was taking profound and proper revenge. I shrieked, whooped, howled, and sputtered as she tickled and tickled and tickled my poor, sensitive feet. She went from scratching both soles at once, unerringly tracking my now wildly kicking feet, to grabbing one ankle in her strong scullery-maid’s grip and tickling that foot with such insistent precision that my eyes fairly started out of my head and I howled like a madwoman.
It felt as if she held me there forever, but in truth it was perhaps two or three minutes. She released me, leaving me still sobbing and giggling uncontrollably, and beat her own retreat. As I came to myself, I realized that Lord Horatio had gone in search of the turmoil, while Lady Bethany sat, a blanket pulled up to her throat, looking about in alarm and shock, awaiting his report. I knew that my window of opportunity was limited – as luck would have it, the only door to the room they had been in was opposite my vantage point, and the labyrinthine halls of the manor would prevent anyone from reaching my post too quickly. I slid backward, stepped down through the hole, feeling about with my toes until I found the stepladder Sam had stood upon to tickle me. As rapidly as I could, I descended it, replaced the panel she had removed, and sought my escape.
At that moment, I heard voices in the corridor immediately outside the door.
“Sam? We heard a wild commotion – is everything well? Is everyone safe?”
Sam replied in her staid, servant’s tones. “Oh, yes, sir. The girls and I were simply having a bit of a joke, and I’m afraid we got a bit … tickled.”
“Ah. Are you certain? It sounded as if it might be coming from the ventilation shafts…”
“Oh, no sir. Old houses like this have the most peculiar echoes.”
And that was that. I waited for a space of five minutes after his footsteps faded down the hall, then returned, touseled, tearstained, angered, but eminently grateful to dear Sam, to my bedroom, where, once I recovered from my fright, I…tended to the unfinished business I had neglected in the shafts.
I thought you’d appreciate that detail, dear. And in case you were wondering, Lady Bethany never breathed a word about the incident to us again. Truth be told, I imagine it rather excited her to think that we might be watching her put Horatio through his paces. Now, that’s my story told. Perhaps, if you have all you need, we might quiet our mutual…aggravation together?
Here ends the relevant portion of this entry.
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This is part of a project I've been working on. It's based in the same world as the Voyage Out series, but most of it dates from long ago in that world's history. It's pretty racy, so no-one under 18 should be reading it. Feedback is appreciated, as are suggestions.
[/I] The Journals of Hieronymous Meade
A catalogue of misadventures, observations, and interviews centering upon the general theme of mirth energy and its extraction
Compiled and edited by Professor Dahlia Bronwen
Editor’s Preface
{The following document, for all the years I and a core of assistants have devoted to assembling, editing, and compiling it, will inevitably read like a random assemblage of disconnected thoughts. This regrettable fact is attributable, in large part, to its principal author, the mysterious Hieronymous Meade himself. Meade was many things – jester, conman, voyeur, priapic, vagabond, sometime maniac, and, most importantly, perhaps the greatest scientist and mage in the history of our world. He is almost single-handedly to credit for the largest body of research and knowledge about mirth energy ever amassed, and all of us owe this unique and bizarre character an enormous debt. In addition, his works provide a remarkable travel narrative, as he spanned almost all of the continents of this world and her island planets, and provided unique insights about every one.
The following fragments comprise all that has yet been found of Meade’s obsessively maintained and detailed journals. They vary widely in form, tone, and content, though all published here bear significantly upon mirth energy in one way or another. Some read like simple comic anecdotes, others, like erotic literature, still others like clinical trials. Many recount the author’s own rakish adventures – others recount the stories that others told him about mirth-related topics, which he collected and recorded obsessively even if they bore only slightly on his current research. A disproportionate number of these come from women whom Meade designates in no uncertain terms as attractive, and often indicates that he has had relationships with. Intriguingly, the author’s propensity toward storytelling often keeps the specific scientific details to a kind of periphery – his specific scientific notes are collected in the lengthy appendices in this volume’s companion piece. Overall, what emerges here is a genre-defying work of literature: a complex portrait of a roguish genius and the research that made him legendary.
The excerpts appearing here are in no particular order, representing merely what my team and I have been able to decode from Meade’s maddening cryptography.}
Annie’s Tale
[In the course of my researches into Mirth Energy, the theme of tickling has understandably emerged again and again as one of the most dramatic and powerful ways of producing this mystical and elusive essence. I have accumulated, in the course of my research, a stunning array of tales that center on this subject, some of which relate directly to the production of power, others that simply make for interesting and diverting reading and suggest the variety of ways that this seemingly simple form of interaction has affected individual lives and even the course of history at various times. I have compiled these tales here, in my appendix, for future scholars, seekers of information, and for those in search of unique entertainment.
The first of these tales comes from Annie, one of the servant girls who was so essential in my earliest discovery of mirth crystals and their potential. I have described her elsewhere, but will reiterate here. Annie is a stunning, petite creature with emerald doe-eyes, shoulder-length, dark golden hair, and smooth, soft, brown skin gently kissed by the sun. Annie was a vision as she recounted her tale: she sat back upon my divan, long hair loose about her naked shoulders, clad in a simple brown dress that amplified the gifts with which nature had blessed her. I recall, as I tend to recall such things, that she was barefoot, sun-browned, pink-soled feet propped on an ottoman in front of her, crossed at the ankles, and at certain points in her story her toes would wiggle and curl, her soles flex and crinkle, as if to underscore appropriate points. She knew, of course, that this would drive me mad.
In any event, aside from her obvious and surprising eloquence, you will note the frankness and honesty here as she divulges a tale the details of which one might expect would be a source of embarrassment – a common theme in many of these stories. The freedom of expression that the reader will note in these tales, often told by those who would ordinarily be much more strait-laced, owes much to my scientific method. With the subjects’ permission, I gave each a draught which both heightened recall and lowered inhibitions–not of behavior, as such a thing would be grossly uncivilized, but in terms of speech. In the interest of science, my stalwart subjects were willing to imbibe it, and as a result provided utterly unguarded accounts of their experiences. The results are both scientifically valuable and, I must admit, frequently quite titillating. Annie, fairly uninhibited from the outset, was the first to partake of the draught – later imbibers were swayed by the weight of my scientific reputation. The rewards of my work are truly manifold.
In the interest of clarity, and of enhancing the tale, I should introduce some principals. One of these is Lord Horatio, the suitor to Lady Bethany whose efforts at wooing led directly to the events described. Another is Lady Bethany herself, a stunning, patrician beauty, with alabaster skin (dare I invoke such a cliche?) and gently tumbling nut-brown tresses to compliment her stunning, lean physique. Finally, there is the beguiling Samantha, the cook, somewhat older than the other two at perhaps forty, but a seasoned feast for the eyes: buxom and curvy, pert Celtic features, a heart-shaped pink face framed by full chestnut tresses, and always a hint of the temptress about her. The remainder of descriptions and events shall be in Annie’s own words.]
You want stories about tickling, then? Very well, if it will advance the cause of science as well as the swelling in your trousers, you naughty cad, I suppose I shall tell you a somewhat embarrassing story of my own experience in which it emerges as a kind of central theme, throughout. I suppose it began one morning in the late spring, as we were preparing the manor house for the visit of Lord Horatio, Lady Bethany’s principal beau. We had all been rushing about, cleaning and primping the manor house, as if he needed to be impressed by anything beyond Lady Bethany’s personal charms. I had just finished scrubbing all the bathchambers and showers [n.b.: For my legions of readers from outside our peculiar dimension, I should make clear that elements that would strike some as anachronisms are common in our world – in line with the sorceress’s design, our various lands and regions tend to maintain the more charming elements of particular historical eras, but with what will seem to others to be more contemporary conveniences] and went to the kitchens for a bit of a snack.
Removing my slippers so as not to spoil her sparkling floors, I entered the cavernous kitchen. I was greeted by a bumping and scraping from the far end of the vast, empty kitchen, which had recently been cleaned and mopped to sparkling by the dedicated toil of our dear Sam. Upon investigating, I discovered her engaged in cleaning the great iron stove. I couldn’t see much of her, as her head, shoulders and arms had vanished completely inside the monstrosity as she knelt to clean it. She worked assiduously, cursing in her scots brogue as she scoured the innards of the beast. It was a comical sight, her rear end protruding from that great iron beast, shaking with her vigorous scrubbings, and, I confess, prompted me to mischief.
As common sense dictated, Sam had been mopping and scrubbing the kitchen floors barefoot, and as she knelt cleaning the oven, resting on her heels, the pink crinkly bottoms of her big feet and her round, sturdy toes provided too tempting a target for me to resist. I crept up behind her and slowly stroked a fingernail down the center of one sole.
She let out a precious little squeal that echoed strikingly in the metal chamber; her foot jumped and her toes clenched and wriggled, trying to fight off the sensation. I expected a round cussing out, but she, realizing, I suppose, the helplessness of her position – she was almost completely inside the stove, packed in rather tightly, and would have had to sort of wriggle her way out in reverse – took immediately to a kind of frenzied begging quite out of character with her usual gruff toughness. “Oh, please, please don’t! I can’t stand that! Don’t be cruel to poor Sam!” I, of course, was only encouraged by her reaction, and continued my slow torture, drawing my nails delicately over her defenseless bare feet. She responded with breathless peals of giggles, shaking and shivering inside her iron prison.
I suppose I was foolish, in retrospect, for speaking at all – she could scarcely have guessed (though she would probably have had some idea) which of the manor staff was torturing her. Still, the mischief in me took over, and I started crooning to her. “Oh, my, who’d have thought, the gruff and tough Miss Sam has such tickly feet! Surely such a mature and confident woman can’t be as ticklish as all that!” I paused for a moment, taking each struggling toe in turn between thumb and forefinger and giving it a little wiggle. Granted a brief respite from all-out tickling by my toe-tugging, Sam gasped for breath, and spoke haltingly but threateningly from inside the stove.
“Annie...huff...I...swear, I’ll...gasp...get you for this...you little...”
“Uh, oh,” I said wickedly, as I reached the smallest toe of the second foot.
“You know what time it is, don’t you?”
“No...what are you talking about, you evil doxy...”
“Time for this little piggy to go wee wee wee all the way home!” I shouted, and attacked the bottoms of both her feet with a broadside burst of two-handed tickling.
She shrieked so loudly I jumped, and then she began to fairly roar with deep belly-laughter. Her defenseless feet tried to move, but had little opportunity – she crossed one over the other to the limited degree that she could, and kept switching them ineffectually as I gladly accepted each newly topmost sole as my primary tickling target, and invariably found it just as sensitive as its predecessor. When I felt particularly sadistic, I let her know just how helpless she was by grabbing both her big toes together in one hand and scrabbling my fingernails over the insides of both arches – which I imagined must be the most ticklish parts, given my own experience – with precision and vigor.
When I did this, she let out a bellow and her whole body jumped. I heard a great hollow “bang” from inside the stove, and realized she must have bumped her head on the inside top of the stove, at the base of the pipe. Scared she might have hurt herself, I laid off my tickling and took a few hurried steps back before asking, “Sam? Are you all right?”
I couldn’t control my own laughter when Sam slowly backed out of the stove. She frequently scrubbed the inside of it, but much less often did the bloke come around to clean out the pipe at the top; when she had bumped her head, a shower of black soot had come pouring down and covered her, head and shoulders, blackening the auburn ringlets that framed her pretty face. Her eyes glowed with anger from her sooty mask; for a moment, I thought she was going to come after me, and I danced away from her a bit, but she just pointed at me and spoke, in a trembling voice: “Annie Malloy, you’ve not heard the last o’ this!”
I blew her a kiss and ran away, and thought no more of it until the next evening.
Now before I get to the racy bit, I should tell you a little about Miss Bethany and her suitor. Lord Horatio had been calling on her for some months, and she had developed a love of teasing the poor man to distraction. She’s quite the tease, and I believe she would rather drive a man to blue-balls and pleasure herself over it afterwards than have a good rogering of her own. (I, of course, prefer the rogering, but can see the appeal of getting a good-looking bloke like yourself all hot and bothered first.) Anyhow, once we girls figured out what she was doing, we would delight in embarrassing the noble lord as well. We always managed to be outside in the hallway as he took his leave of her, hunched over his stiff prick and swollen bollocks. We even made a habit, when in our crueler moods, of knocking quickly on his door and barging in five minutes or so after he retired, and delighted in his red-faced attempts to hide that he had been “easing his tension” by his own hand. He’s quite the handsome man, if you like older chaps, and the one time that I waited a few moments longer and managed a glimpse of him trying frantically to hide his considerable member in the midst of a fountain-like crisis has given me an image that has carried me through to a few private moments of pleasure myself. I thought you’d like that – that’s made you shift a bit to make room in your trousers!
Anyhow, we knew that this evening she must have similar plans, and were all dead curious as to how she managed to drive him so mad without submitting to his desires. She strictly forbade any of us to disturb her in her salon between dinner and the hour when they would retire, so generally we had resigned ourselves that our curiosity would never be fully satisfied.
I, however, had developed a plan. I had discovered, days before, in pursuing a troublesome cat that had worked its way into the ventilation shafts, that I could climb up into the ductwork and crawl to virtually any area in the house. The shafts were quite wide, actually, giving me room to creep in on my belly and crawl along with about three inches to spare. I couldn’t turn around, but I could sidle along without oppressive claustrophobia or fear of getting stuck. Also, the frequent vents, their covers wrought of broadly spaced metal filigree, let in enough light to ease my travel, and allowed for fine views of individual rooms. I had told no-one about what I had found, and had faked illness earlier that day to get out of my duties. Your Annie Malloy is a curious one, particularly when it comes to matters of the bedroom, and if the mistress’s rules meant that I would have no relief save what I gave myself, I would at least see to it that the fires of my imagination were stoked by powerful fuel!
Now, as coincidence would have it, this tale is appropriate for your studies for a number of reasons – not just my torture of poor Sam. I’ll be getting to those directly – stay with me, now.
At any rate, I started my journey just after nine, about half an hour after Lady Bethany and Lord Horatio had retired to her salon. I imagined that by this point, her teasing would be in full swing. I had prepared for bed, donning my nightgown and brushing my hair, and made a point of informing the girls that I was retiring for the night, so none would pop in and check on me out of concern for my wellbeing. Now, the difficult part began.
The only way into the ductwork big enough for a person to climb into was the portion I had removed to go in after the cat – a portion in the upstairs broom closet, a location I had chosen because it would be out of sight of the company before I had any inkling of this plan. Dressed only in a white cotton nightgown, I peeked out the door to find the coast was clear, then crept barefoot down the hall into the broom closet, and closed the door behind me. Holding my breath, I boosted myself up into the ductwork as quietly as possible, relieved as the light in the shafts contrasted with the pitch darkness of the closet. Slowly, carefully, I inched my way along the shaft, counting vents as I went so that I did not have to check my progress visually and risk being spotted through a vent.
As I went, I became increasingly conscious of muted voices, one of which was unquestionably that of a man. It was virtually impossible to hear their conversations through the thick oaken doors of the salon, but here in the vent shaft, their voices carried rather well. I began to breathe more quickly in spite of myself, and found myself becoming rather hotly aroused at the prospect of what I would soon see and hear. I inched along, propelling myself on my belly by elbows, knees, and toes, thighs rubbing together in a quite agitating manner in my current state.
At last I reached the salon – as it turned out, it was served by a single vent at the dead end of the long corridor, directly in front of my face. I lowered myself to a resting position, fully prone, and ventured to peek through the vent at the scene below.
My vantage was perfect. The ceiling here was rather high, as the salon was on a slightly lower level than the rest of the ground floor. Lady Bethany and her beau were on a great, overstuffed sofa directly across the room from me – I had a perfect view of them, perhaps twenty feet away. The lighting in the room was soft, and cast me and my vent in fortuitous cloaking shadow. If all went well, I knew I shouldn’t be discovered.
It was immediately clear that Lady Bethany was teasing the poor man to distraction. She is quite lovely, my mistress – pale skin, patrician features, dark eyes, beautiful ringlets of dark hair that poured down her back in a cataract when she let them, as she did now. She was reclining in a position of purest luxury; she had removed her shoes and stockings, and her elegant bare feet rested in Horatio’s lap. He was massaging them with some kind of oil as she moaned and stretched, catlike, and regarded him with heavy-lidded, sensuous eyes. Her gown had shifted well up her lithe thighs, and her bodice had settled well down on her breasts, revealing her ivory gifts almost to the nipples.
The extremely agitated state of Horatio’s manhood was obvious even from my vantage point – the tight trousers still in fashion for the nobility are ill-suited for concealing erections, and Horatio’s bountiful gifts were certainly too much for them. Lady Bethany would occasionally allow her toes to brush along his straining shaft, or, in mid-stretch, allow the sole of a foot to rub softly against his bulging stones as he massaged away in exquisite torture.
“L-lady Bethany…I am a man of …some pride, as you know….and I am not given to…pleading with a woman, particularly on these matters. But I think we both know…that you are not withholding your charms from me based on (oh, God!) …virtue. A woman led by virtue does not …allow her beau to watch her pleasure herself, as you did during my last visit, to my admitted delight…A woman led by virtue does not drive a man to the brink of crisis with…aah…with her toes, on the pretext of receiving a simple massage.”
“What is your point, my darling?” Lady Bethany replied, kneading the head of his bursting member with her toes for a moment and robbing him of the power of speech.
“Errgh….aah…my point, my dearest, is that I…aah…believe you have been tormenting me on purpose, by accelerating degrees, for the past several months.”
“And what do you propose we do about that? Will you take me? Ravish me? A gentleman like yourself would certainly never stoop to such assaults on a lady’s virtue. Even a lady of such…questionable virtue as myself.” She poked his balls playfully with her toe, making him jump a bit in his seat.
Horatio was apoplectic – red-faced, hard as diamond, suffused with equal parts arousal and outrage. I was enjoying the spectacle immensely. He seemed trapped – he had expressed his anger, she had acknowledged, tacitly, the truth of his claim, and essentially told him he could do nothing but continue to submit.
I must confess I was totally unprepared for what he did next. Lady Bethany seemed no more prepared than I. Horatio, his eyes lit by a fire of desperation, seized both of her slender ankles under his arm. I expected him perhaps to thrust his raging member against her soles, to steal some sort of relief short of ravishing her thoroughly, but such was not his plan. He began, instead, wildly to tickle the bottoms of Lady Bethany’s tormenting bare feet.
Lady Bethany’s reaction was stunning. She contorted for a moment as if bitten by a serpent, her eyes and mouth wide with hilarious shock. Then she began to fairly scream with laughter, her aristocratic, bell-clear contralto forced into the service of her ticklish panic. Horatio’s fingers moved with blinding speed, gliding and scratching over Bethany’s long, slender, wrinkled soles, as her long, delicate toes clenched, splayed, and wiggled desperately. The look on her face was priceless – all traces of her smoldering, cool, confident seductiveness had vanished, replaced by a look of absolute shock and disbelief. She didn’t seem to believe what was happening to her, did not accept the sensations coming from the soles of her feet, was dumbfounded by the wracking gales of laughter forced from her even as they burst forth from her mouth. She yanked one foot free and kicked feebly at his back with it – he held the other all the tighter and tickled its bare bottom with new resolve until she slid from the couch, face redder than his had been throughout all her teasing, her look of shock now replaced by a broad, foolish grin, her formerly wide eyes now closed against the tears that poured down her cheeks. She shook with silent laughter, now, as he worked his way from the base of her toes down the center of her arch to her tender heel and back again. At last, amid wracking sobs, she managed to rasp, “I give!”
Horatio paused, regarding her uncertainly, still holding her ankle, fingertips poised for another assault on her vulnerable foot. “You…give?”
“Yes…I…give.” She was panting, her foolish grin remaining in place, as she lay exhausted on the floor, one leg still in his lap.
“You will, at last, yield to me? Oh, Bethany, you have…”
“Not entirely,” Bethany said, after taking advantage of his initial joy to yank her foot out of his grasp and rub its beleaguered bottom against the rug. “But I will yield in part. Unbutton your trousers and lower them.”
Trembling, he did as she said, too preoccupied to help her as she climbed back onto the couch. His member, now naked, stood large and proud; his balls heavy and swollen.
“Mmm…” said Bethany. “Now, sit down.” The command was back in her voice, now, and he did as she said, sitting at the end of the couch as before after spreading a handkerchief manfully over the cushion that would receive his naked backside.
“Now, just relax,” she cooed in a husky voice. He sat back, laying his head on the back of the couch, and closed his eyes. Lady Bethany lay back as before, when he was massaging her, and again extended her feet into his lap. This time, however, her bare lotion-slicked soles caressed his manhood in earnest, brushing over his swollen testicles, stroking his empurpled shaft, encircling his manhood and massaging it slowly, softly, between them. His face contorted into a rictus of passion, twisting in pleasure so intense it bordered on pain, as he pumped his hips gently into her caressing feet. He would not last long, I knew – my mistress seemed to know as well, as she delved a hand between her thighs and began unpretentiously and expeditiously stroking her quim through her sheer skirts.
I will confess – and this should be no surprise to you – that I was sorely tempted to do the same, right there in the ductwork. All that stopped me was fear of discovery by virtue of the noises I would make – unlike some women, I have a difficult time remaining quiet as I take my pleasure. So I remained still, quiet, flushed and burning with arousal, nipples hard and inner parts slick, as I watched them.
As I had predicted, the process was not a long one. First, my mistress came by her own hand in a dainty, ladylike gasping spasm. Then – as if he, gentleman to the last, were waiting her culmination before surrendering to his own – he let out a throaty cry as his cock began launching great glistening gouts of seed into the air and all over both of them. She, her podal dexterity unaffected by the ordeal of her orgasm, continued to stroke his blasting cock with one slick sole as she pressed with the great toe of her other foot just behind his throbbing balls. He, face warped into a grotesque mask of ineffable pleasure, must have discharged a gallon of semen, spurt by shuddering spurt, until he collapsed red-faced with a little ecstatic whinny.
They lay there, speechless and sated, soaked in his seed, for some time, and I decided the time was right to make my retreat and satisfy my own now-raging desires in the privacy of my bedchamber. I made up my mind to begin backing down the shaft – it was too narrow to allow for turning around, at least without making a considerable racket – when my heart leaped and my breath caught in my throat.
Something had tapped me on the ankle.
Panicked, but still determined to keep silent, I glanced back over my shoulder, hoping it wasn’t a rat (we had never had a rat in the manor, to my knowledge, but then again I had never spent much time crawling about in the ductwork). I saw only that the area just behind me was oddly illuminated from below. Reaching backward and feeling about with my toes, I found that a panel in the bottom of the ductwork immediately behind me had been stealthily removed, leaving an open space about two feet square. Someone had discovered me! I could see little more, craning my neck as I was, so I simply looked frontward and prayed for mercy. My mistress and her beau were still blessedly oblivious to my presence, recovering from their respective transports – I could only wait to discover the aims of my discoverer.
I found out soon enough, as in an instant I deduced both the identity of the new arrival and her aims. As I mentioned earlier, I had climbed into the ductwork barefoot – I was dressed in nightclothes anyway, and even if I had not been, I would probably have removed my shoes for the sake of stealth. Now, someone was taking advantage of my unfortunate wardrobe choice by holding my right ankle and stroking a sharp but smooth thumbnail slowly up and down the sole of my bare foot.
In the best of circumstances, I am devilishly ticklish – if a beau or girlfriend lays hold of my unshod feet in a roughhouse, it takes only seconds to reduce me to cackling surrender. But aroused and frightened as I was, my nerves all on edge, I was beyond the pale. Had she straight out tickled the bottoms of my feet full force, I would doubtless have shrieked and screamed immediately, giving myself away. But my tormentor was not so eager to end his her enjoyment.
I was utterly trapped, and my torturer knew it. The only way out would be to back down the shaft, and she could easily prevent me from doing so, as any real struggle on my part was sure to make sufficient noise to alert those in the room below. There was nothing I could do as she began my maltreatment. She tickled me with slow, light, maddening strokes, teasing my toes, tracing the wee wrinkles that lined my soles when I curled my toes against her tickling touches. I felt fit to burst – my teeth clenched, my eyes tiny slits, I shook with silent giggles, forced myself to quiet the jumps and twitches her tickles evoked. Still she toyed with me, delaying what I felt was the inevitable broadside onslaught of fingernails scribbling over my arches. She scratched a tiny spot on my heel so insistently that I thought I would scream, then eased slippery fingers between my flexing toes and simply held them there, there presence enough to make me a quivering nervous wreck. Every now and then she would allow a single finger to trace over the lengths of both my soles, reminding me of where I was truly, deathly ticklish, and promising things to come.
Tears were beginning to fill my eyes – I blinked them away and saw my lady and her beau in repose, her feet back in his lap as he cleaned them lovingly with a handkerchief. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, and it seemed they would soon retire. If only I could hold out until then…
The tormenting hands ceased for a moment, then began a childish, playful, and sickeningly familiar game, tugging on each of my toes in turn. My mind supplied the monologue: “This little piggy went to market….this little piggy stayed home…”
As she reached my smallest toe, I heard a soft whisper in Sam’s familiar, coarse Scots brogue. “Do ye know what time it is, Annie dear?”
I squinched up my face, clenched my teeth, and shut my eyes tight. I knew very well what time it would be. The bottoms of my poor feet had never felt so bare and vulnerable in my life.
Without finishing the narration, Sam attacked both of my soles at once with a devastating two-handed tickle, scribbling her short but effective nails over my heels, the balls of my feet, the pads of my toes, and, especially, and most terrible of all, the high hollows of my arches.
There would be no girlish giggles from this maid. I burst out immediately with bellowing, heaving peals of laughter – something along the lines of “BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!”
Like that, did you?
I believed my goose to be well and truly cooked, but could not even think rationally on my own potential ruin, so busy was I being tickled into mad hysterics. Sam had her little barefoot prankster trapped, and she was taking profound and proper revenge. I shrieked, whooped, howled, and sputtered as she tickled and tickled and tickled my poor, sensitive feet. She went from scratching both soles at once, unerringly tracking my now wildly kicking feet, to grabbing one ankle in her strong scullery-maid’s grip and tickling that foot with such insistent precision that my eyes fairly started out of my head and I howled like a madwoman.
It felt as if she held me there forever, but in truth it was perhaps two or three minutes. She released me, leaving me still sobbing and giggling uncontrollably, and beat her own retreat. As I came to myself, I realized that Lord Horatio had gone in search of the turmoil, while Lady Bethany sat, a blanket pulled up to her throat, looking about in alarm and shock, awaiting his report. I knew that my window of opportunity was limited – as luck would have it, the only door to the room they had been in was opposite my vantage point, and the labyrinthine halls of the manor would prevent anyone from reaching my post too quickly. I slid backward, stepped down through the hole, feeling about with my toes until I found the stepladder Sam had stood upon to tickle me. As rapidly as I could, I descended it, replaced the panel she had removed, and sought my escape.
At that moment, I heard voices in the corridor immediately outside the door.
“Sam? We heard a wild commotion – is everything well? Is everyone safe?”
Sam replied in her staid, servant’s tones. “Oh, yes, sir. The girls and I were simply having a bit of a joke, and I’m afraid we got a bit … tickled.”
“Ah. Are you certain? It sounded as if it might be coming from the ventilation shafts…”
“Oh, no sir. Old houses like this have the most peculiar echoes.”
And that was that. I waited for a space of five minutes after his footsteps faded down the hall, then returned, touseled, tearstained, angered, but eminently grateful to dear Sam, to my bedroom, where, once I recovered from my fright, I…tended to the unfinished business I had neglected in the shafts.
I thought you’d appreciate that detail, dear. And in case you were wondering, Lady Bethany never breathed a word about the incident to us again. Truth be told, I imagine it rather excited her to think that we might be watching her put Horatio through his paces. Now, that’s my story told. Perhaps, if you have all you need, we might quiet our mutual…aggravation together?
Here ends the relevant portion of this entry.
