chandor864
TMF Novice
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2025
- Messages
- 50
- Points
- 18
ELISA’S PRICE OF LAUGHTER (Part 1)
Élisa adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose, a gesture she always made when she felt superior to a situation. Sitting in the overly deep leather armchair of Mr. Sterling's office, she scanned the twenty-page contract with a pout of disdain she didn't even try to hide.
The contract was not a series of one-off services, but an indivisible block. Élisa was not signing merely for "sessions," but for a complete cycle of twelve encounters.
— "Sensory stimulation session via light cutaneous contact," she read aloud, underlining each word in a monotone voice. "You could have simply written 'tickling,' Mr. Sterling. It would have saved some ink."
Across from her, the man didn’t flinch. He was the very image of neutrality: a perfectly tailored gray suit, hands folded on a mahogany desk, and a gaze that seemed to weigh every atom of oxygen in the room.
— "Legal jargon is a protection, Mademoiselle. For you as well as for me."
Élisa let out a short, dry laugh. At thirty-five, with a master's degree in economics and a mountain of debt that was beginning to look like the GDP of a small country, she had no time for metaphors. She needed those three thousand euros a month. And if, to get them, she had to spend a few hours a week enduring the eccentricities of a bored billionaire, so be it.
— "I’ve never been very reactive to this kind of... childishness," she continued, grabbing the pen he held out to her. "As a child, my brother tried to make me laugh to steal my toys. It never worked. I have quite... exceptional nervous control."
— "We shall see," Sterling replied. His voice was soft, almost clinical.
She signed with a sharp stroke, a nervous and confident calligraphy. At that precise moment, she only saw the numbers in her bank account. She didn't see the trap. She didn't yet feel the impatience of her own nerves—those thousands of nerve endings beneath her skin, waiting for the spark.
— "Follow me," he said, standing up. "We begin the trial session immediately."
Élisa stood, smoothing her pencil skirt with Olympian composure. She wondered if she’d have time to go grocery shopping on the way home. She was so convinced of her own solidity that she didn’t even notice the room he led her into had no windows, and that the door locked electronically behind them.
In the center of the room sat a reclined chair, strangely similar to a dentist's, but covered in black velvet.
— "Please remove your pumps and stockings and take a seat," Sterling ordered, pulling on a pair of white cotton gloves.
Élisa complied, a mocking smile on her lips. Easiest money of my life, she thought.
Sterling nodded, inviting Élisa to lie back. She did so, her white silk blouse contrasting with the dark leather. She crossed her arms over her chest, an instinctive gesture of defiance, but Sterling, with icy courtesy, asked her to place them on the armrests.
— "For science, Mademoiselle. I must observe the ribcage."
He didn't reach for the feathers yet. He started with something far more insidious: his fingers, gloved in white cotton.
Sterling positioned himself to her right. Without a word, he ran the pads of his index fingers along the soles of her bare feet. Élisa didn't move. She stared at the ceiling, mentally counting the LED tiles.
"Easy," she thought. "It’s just superficial pressure."
But Sterling didn’t stop. He found the exact hollow of the arch and began to trace small, slow, almost imperceptible circles. The cotton glided over her skin with the regularity of a metronome.
Suddenly, an electric shock shot up Élisa's leg. It wasn't pain, but a sensation so sharp it took her breath away. Her toes curled with a sharp snap.
— "A reflex?" Sterling noted in a neutral voice, glancing at the monitor.
— "A... a muscle spasm. Nothing more," she lied, her voice slightly higher than usual.
Sterling changed targets. His hands moved up toward Élisa's waist. He didn't tickle her outright; he simply brushed the flanks, just above the hips, where the skin is thinnest.
That was where the wall crumbled.
As soon as his fingers pressed very lightly on the tissue between her ribs, a sound rose in Élisa's throat. A sound she hadn't made in twenty years. A small, muffled, high-pitched giggle, almost childlike.
— "Oh... no..." she whispered, trying to wriggle away from the contact.
— "Is something wrong?" Sterling asked, his fingers continuing their pitiless exploration.
— "Stop... it’s... it’s ridiculous," she managed to articulate between two jagged breaths.
She tried to regain her mask of ice, but her body no longer obeyed her. With every movement Sterling made, her abdominal muscles contracted violently. The laughter, at first contained, began to explode in bursts. She realized with sudden terror that she wasn't just ticklish: she was vulnerable.
She tried to sit up, her eyes bright with involuntary tears of laughter.
— "Alright, I get the principle. I... I think we’re done for today. I’ll return the deposit."
Sterling stopped, but remained standing over her. He pulled the document she had just signed from his pocket.
— "Clause 4.2, Mademoiselle. 'Any unilateral interruption of the test session before the end of the 90-minute protocol results in an immediate cancellation penalty of ten thousand euros.'"
Élisa froze. Ten thousand euros. She didn't have it. She looked at Sterling, then at his gloved hands, then at the peacock feather waiting on the tray.
— "We are only at the seventh minute," he said, picking up a down feather. "Lie back, Élisa. We are resuming."
Élisa lay back down, her heart pounding. It was no longer the calm rhythm of a businesswoman, but that of prey. She closed her eyes, clenching her jaws until it hurt.
"It’s a matter of will," she repeated to herself. "Ignore the sensations. Detach your mind from your nerves."
But Sterling was no amateur. He had detected the breaking point: the flanks.
He seized the peacock feather. The long stem allowed for clinical distance, but the silky barbs at the end were fearsomely precise. He began with Élisa's ribs, just under the underwire of her bra.
The contact was at first a ghost of a caress. Then, with a sharp, rhythmic motion, he flicked the feather into the intercostal spaces.
— "NO!" Élisa yelped.
Her reaction was immediate and electric. Her glasses fell to the floor. Her back arched violently, her hands gripped the edges of the black leather, her knuckles turning white. A convulsive, high-pitched laugh escaped her lips. It wasn't a laugh of joy; it was a pure nervous discharge, a short circuit between her skin and her brain.
— "Mr... Sterling... please... hihi... please!" she managed to gasp, punctuated by loud hiccups.
Every time she tried to catch her breath, he changed the rhythm. The feather now moved down toward her waist, where the skin is thinnest, most reactive. Élisa squirmed, her legs flailing on the footrest, her knees knocking together in a desperate attempt to protect her stomach.
— "You seem very sensitive here," he noted, his voice as steady as ever. "Let’s observe the reaction to a denser stimulation."
He set aside the feather for both his gloved hands. He was no longer just brushing; he was literally "kneading" her flanks with diabolical speed.
That’s when Élisa tipped over. Tears began to roll down her temples, wetting her brown hair. She couldn't stop laughing—a laugh that made her abs ache, that literally cut off her breath. She was drenched in sweat, her skin turning a bright pink from the rush of blood.
Her hands tried to catch Sterling's wrists, but he dodged them with disconcerting agility, forcing her to keep her arms raised, completely exposed.
She no longer spoke words, but jagged onomatopoeias alternated with cries of helplessness. "Ah! No-ho! Haha... hi... ple... stop!"
Her body almost bounced on the chair, each new attack on her ribs sending a jolt through her entire spine.
Sterling stopped abruptly. The silence that followed was almost deafening, disturbed only by Élisa's erratic, wheezing breath. She lay there trembling, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling with an expression of pure incredulity. She felt violated in her dignity—not by him, but by her own body, which had betrayed her so joyfully.
— "We are at fifteen minutes, Élisa," Sterling said, checking his luxury watch. "Your cortisol levels have skyrocketed. It’s fascinating. Now, let’s move on to the brushes on the arches of the feet."
She wanted to scream that she couldn't take anymore, that she was going to faint from laughter, but her gaze met the contract on the desk again. She was trapped. She closed her eyes, already feeling the brush of sable hair against her bare heels.
Sterling placed his fingers on Élisa’s ankles to hold them firmly in the steel rests. The contact was cold, authoritative. She felt a shiver of pure anticipation run down her spine. Her feet, elegantly arched, were now totally exposed, vulnerable under the harsh LED light.
He didn't start with the feather. He chose a Japanese calligraphy brush with long, perfectly supple sable hairs.
— "The human foot has over 7,000 nerve endings," Sterling whispered in an almost hypnotic voice. "The sole is the command center of your archaic reflexes, Élisa. Let’s see how your 'exceptional control' fares here."
He glided the tip of the brush, as light as a breath, from the top of her right big toe, then down slowly, very slowly, toward the heel.
The effect was devastating. Élisa let out a high-pitched cry, a sort of muffled yelp, as her leg shot out violently in a reflex spasm.
— "Hah! No! Not there... hihi... please!"
Her toes curled and then fanned out, moving with a life of their own. The brush continued its relentless journey, now exploring the sensitive hollow of the arch. Every pass sent an electric shock up to her pelvis. She squirmed on the black leather, her hips pivoting frantically to try to move her soles away from this silky torment.
Sterling, seeing she was reaching a breaking point, grabbed a second brush. He attacked both feet simultaneously, using different rhythms: To the right: Rapid, erratic tapping on the ball of the foot. To the left: Long, sinuous strokes drawing eights on her heel.
Élisa tipped into a total, physical, almost painful laughing fit. Her abs were so tight she felt as if they might tear. Pure reflex tears flooded her face, blurring her vision. She tried to pull her legs back, to hide her feet, but Sterling's gloved hands pitilessly brought them back to the center of the light.
— "Aha... hihihe... I... I hate... hihi... this! Sterling... stop! It's too much... it's too much!"
The most disturbing part for her wasn't the laughter, but the sensation of losing her identity. She, the serious 35-year-old woman, the respected professional, was nothing more than a mass of nerves twitching at the end of a brush.
— "You said it was childish, Élisa," Sterling reminded her as he swapped the brushes for a much denser ostrich feather, which he began to brush vigorously against her soles.
Élisa’s laughter became deeper, more guttural—a series of jagged, uncontrollable "Ho-ho-hos." She was out of breath, her chest heaving violently under her silk blouse, now soaked with sweat. She realized with horror that there was still over an hour left in the session. The contract was no longer just a piece of paper; it was a sentence to ecstasy and torment.
The silence that fell back over the room was almost as violent as the assault of the feathers. Sterling removed his instruments from Élisa's feet and drew himself up to his full height, motionless.
Élisa remained slumped on the black leather, her body shaken by residual tremors. Her chest rose in an erratic rhythm, searching for the air she had so cruelly lacked. Her brown hair, usually so perfectly styled, stuck to her temples and neck. She was drenched, the skin of her feet still red and vibrating from the sensory aggression she had just endured.
— "Look at me, Élisa," he ordered in a calm, almost gentle voice.
She didn't move right away. She was ashamed. Ashamed of this laughter that wasn't hers, ashamed of this total loss of composure. She finally raised her head, her hazel eyes glistening with involuntary tears.
Sterling didn't have a sadistic smile; he had the expression of a watchmaker observing a complex mechanism whose breaking point he had just found.
— "Well?" he asked. "Is it still so 'stupid'? Is it still 'childishness' over which you have absolute control?"
Élisa tried to regain her poise, to smooth her silk blouse, but her hands were shaking too much. She tried to harden her gaze, to become the cold professional woman again.
— "It's... it's physiological," she managed to articulate, her voice still raspy. "You are stimulating nerves. Anyone would react that way. It’s not a failure of my will; it’s biology."
Sterling took another step toward her, invading her personal space. He placed a gloved hand on the edge of the chair, right next to her shoulder.
— "Biology is the only truth, Élisa. Everything else—your degree, your seriousness, your disdain—is just a costume you wear to reassure yourself. Here, in this room, the costume is useless. Your body says 'yes' to laughter while your mind screams 'no.' And guess what? Your body wins every time."
He paused, letting his words sink into Élisa's mind. She felt the cold of the steel against her bare feet, a silent promise that rest would be short-lived.
— "You still have seventy-two minutes to go," he resumed. "And we haven't even explored your knees, or your armpits... or the palms of your hands."
Élisa swallowed hard. The mere idea of him touching her armpits sent a flush of heat to her face. She felt trapped by a contract she had signed with a haughtiness that now seemed to belong to another life.
— "What do you want from me?" she whispered, almost defeated.
— "Honesty," he replied, picking up a small silk brush. "Stop pretending you are above this. Accept that you are at my mercy."
He didn't give her time to respond. With a sharp flick, he tilted the back of the chair even lower, exposing her flanks in an even more vulnerable way.
Sterling sketched an almost imperceptible smile. From his tray, he picked up the small black device with rotating silicone heads. A discreet hum, barely a whisper, filled the confined space of the room.
— "The hands, Élisa. We often forget how connected they are to the brain. They are the tools of your intellect, aren't they? It's with them that you sign your contracts, that you type your reports... Let’s see how they react when their social function is stripped away."
He took Élisa's right hand. Her fingers were long and well-groomed—the hand of a 35-year-old woman in control of her environment. But as soon as Sterling turned her palm upward, she felt a surge of panic. It was a position of total surrender.
He didn't use the device right away. He began by passing an ultra-fine silk brush between her fingers, in the sensitive gaps. — "Hi... no... not there..." Élisa tried to close her fist, but Sterling firmly inserted his own thumb to keep the palm open, exposed like a target. Then, he placed the vibrating device at the exact center of her hand.
The effect was electric. It wasn't the intermittent tickle of a feather, but a constant, deep stimulation that seemed to resonate through every bone in her arm.
— "AHAHAH! No! Stop! Sterling... it’s... it’s too strong!"
She twisted in the chair, her body forming an arc. The laughter that burst from her was higher, more jagged. She tried to pull her hand away, but Sterling's grip was iron. The micro-vibrations traveled up to her shoulder, causing involuntary jolts throughout her torso.
Sterling didn't stop there. While the device whirled on her right palm, he used his free hand to frantically tickle her ribs on the left side with his fingers.
Élisa's brain went into sensory overload. She was being assaulted from two sides with two different types of stimuli. To the right: A hypnotic, unbearable vibration that made her feel like her nerves were going to fry. To the left: Precise digital attacks that made her jump and giggle without being able to catch her breath.
— "Ple... hihi... please... haha... please! I... I’m going to... hahahaha!"
She couldn't even finish her sentences. Her eyes were closed, her face flooded with tears, and a strained, purely reflex smile distorted her features. She no longer looked at all like the haughty woman from the start of the session. She was nothing but a human shockwave, totally at the mercy of Sterling's instruments.
Suddenly, he switched off the device. Élisa's hand fell onto the armrest, limp but continuing to twitch in residual jerks. She was exhausted, short of breath, unable even to protest.
— "Look at your hands, Élisa," he said softly. "They are shaking. It's not fear; it's your nervous system no longer knowing how to handle the excess of sensation."
He leaned closer, his face a few centimeters from hers. — "We are only halfway through the time. Does your mind still want to pretend this contract is 'stupid'?"
Élisa opened her eyes. She was broken, but a spark of anger—or perhaps another emotion she wouldn't yet admit to herself—glinted in her pupils. She knew she couldn't back down.
Sterling stepped away for a moment to grab a wide, heavy black satin ribbon. The rustle of the fabric against his cotton gloves echoed like a sentence in the silence of the room.
— "Humans grant 80% of their perception to sight, Élisa," he explained in a hushed voice. "By depriving you of this sense, your brain will desperately try to compensate. Every nerve ending in your skin will become an antenna, every breath of air an assault."
He leaned over her. Élisa caught the faint scent of his cologne—a blend of cedar and cold steel. He slipped the blindfold over her eyes, knotting it with firm precision at the back of her head.
The darkness was instantaneous and absolute.
Deprived of landmarks, Élisa felt her hearing sharpen violently. She heard the creak of the leather under her own weight, the ticking of an invisible clock, and above all... the sound of the instruments Sterling was moving on his tray.
Clink. The sound of metal. Whoosh. The rustle of a feather.
— "Mr. Sterling... I..." she began, her trembling voice betraying her loss of composure.
She didn't know where he was. To her left? To her right? She stayed frozen, muscles tensed to the extreme, waiting for the attack. The void under her bare feet suddenly felt immense.
Suddenly, she felt a warm breath of air near her left ear. — "Relax, Élisa. If you fight, it will be worse."
Without warning, an intense cold sensation touched the hollow of both her knees simultaneously. Sterling was using ice cubes, gliding them slowly. The thermal contrast made her heart leap in her chest.
But before she could even react to the cold, she felt something radically different: the Wartenberg wheel. The small metal spikes began to run along her ribs, alternating with caresses from ostrich feathers.
— "HIHIHE! No-ho! It's... I don't know where... AH!"
Not seeing the instrument coming multiplied the element of surprise tenfold. With every contact, her body reacted with an electric jolt. She could no longer anticipate, no longer mentally prepare. She was like a musical instrument Sterling was playing with cruel virtuosity.
— "Please... haha... I can't see anything... hihi... stop! It's too... haha... unbearable!"
She began to laugh almost hysterically—a laugh of pure sensory panic. Her hands desperately sought Sterling's in the dark, but she only met the void, or worse, a new feather attack where she least expected it.
— "You are magnificent in this surrender, Élisa," Sterling whispered. "Your body has finally stopped lying."
He placed both hands on her hips and began a frantic drumming, moving slowly up toward her armpits—her most critical zone—while she was still plunged into complete darkness.
Élisa was plunged into an abyss of black velvet, where the slightest shiver of air on her skin resonated like a thunderclap. Her senses, deprived of sight, had retreated into touch with a morbid acuity. She heard the rustle of Sterling's gloves—a sharp, almost surgical sound.
— "Here we are, Élisa. The sanctuary of your reflexes," Sterling’s voice whispered, so close she felt his breath on her temple.
His hands moved slowly up her flanks, a light drumming that already made the young woman's back arch. Reaching the upper ribs, he made a cruel pause. Élisa, arms raised and hands clenched on the top of the chair, was panting. She knew what was coming.
Suddenly, without a word of warning, Sterling plunged his index fingers into the hollow of both her armpits simultaneously.
It wasn't a laugh that burst from Élisa, but a kind of strangled cry, a discharge of pure nervous hysteria. Her entire body contracted as if she had received a thousand-volt shock.
— "NO! HAHA! STERLING... NOT THERE! AH! HIHIHE!"
Her legs began to kick the air frantically, her feet searching for a point of support that didn't exist. Sterling used no feathers this time; he used the most fearsome technique: rapid, deep, and incessant digital tickling.
In the darkness of the blindfold, Élisa lost all sense of time and space. She was no longer a 35-year-old woman; she was no longer a brilliant economist. She was nothing but a living shockwave, a sequence of convulsions and laughter so deep they became painful. Reflex tears soaked the black satin of the blindfold.
— "PLEASE... HIHI... PLEASE! I... I CAN'T ANYMORE... HAHAHA!"
Sterling accelerated the pace even more, his fingers exploring every sensitive corner from the shoulder to the pit of the armpit, not leaving her a second to catch her breath. She was holding her breath, her face flushed, her heart drumming against her ribs like a caged bird.
Suddenly, everything stopped.
Sterling withdrew his hands. The silence that followed was frightening. Élisa lay there, arms still raised, her body shaken by residual spasms, her breathing nothing more than an irregular wheeze. She was totally drained, physically and mentally.
He untied the blindfold.
The harsh LED light blinded her for a moment. She blinked, her brown hair in complete disarray, scattered across the black leather. She looked like a shipwreck survivor.
Sterling checked his watch with Olympian calm. — "Ninety minutes exactly. The session is over."
He walked to his desk, filled out a check with a fluid motion, and returned to her. He handed her the paper, but also a glass of fresh water. It took Élisa several long seconds before she could close her trembling fingers around the glass.
— "You held out, Élisa," he said with a new hint of respect in his voice. "Most ask to stop long before, even if it means paying the penalty."
Élisa sat up with the slowness of a centenarian, trying to readjust her wrinkled silk blouse. She looked at the check. Three thousand euros. A fortune for an hour and a half of what she used to call "childishness." She looked up at Sterling.
— "See you next week, Mr. Sterling," she whispered, her voice still cracked.
She stood up, her legs still a bit shaky, and put her pumps back on. As she left, she was no longer thinking about her debts or her professionalism. She was thinking about the fact that she now knew exactly where her greatest weakness lay.
The contract was far from over.
(To be continued)
Élisa adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose, a gesture she always made when she felt superior to a situation. Sitting in the overly deep leather armchair of Mr. Sterling's office, she scanned the twenty-page contract with a pout of disdain she didn't even try to hide.
The contract was not a series of one-off services, but an indivisible block. Élisa was not signing merely for "sessions," but for a complete cycle of twelve encounters.
— "Sensory stimulation session via light cutaneous contact," she read aloud, underlining each word in a monotone voice. "You could have simply written 'tickling,' Mr. Sterling. It would have saved some ink."
Across from her, the man didn’t flinch. He was the very image of neutrality: a perfectly tailored gray suit, hands folded on a mahogany desk, and a gaze that seemed to weigh every atom of oxygen in the room.
— "Legal jargon is a protection, Mademoiselle. For you as well as for me."
Élisa let out a short, dry laugh. At thirty-five, with a master's degree in economics and a mountain of debt that was beginning to look like the GDP of a small country, she had no time for metaphors. She needed those three thousand euros a month. And if, to get them, she had to spend a few hours a week enduring the eccentricities of a bored billionaire, so be it.
— "I’ve never been very reactive to this kind of... childishness," she continued, grabbing the pen he held out to her. "As a child, my brother tried to make me laugh to steal my toys. It never worked. I have quite... exceptional nervous control."
— "We shall see," Sterling replied. His voice was soft, almost clinical.
She signed with a sharp stroke, a nervous and confident calligraphy. At that precise moment, she only saw the numbers in her bank account. She didn't see the trap. She didn't yet feel the impatience of her own nerves—those thousands of nerve endings beneath her skin, waiting for the spark.
— "Follow me," he said, standing up. "We begin the trial session immediately."
Élisa stood, smoothing her pencil skirt with Olympian composure. She wondered if she’d have time to go grocery shopping on the way home. She was so convinced of her own solidity that she didn’t even notice the room he led her into had no windows, and that the door locked electronically behind them.
In the center of the room sat a reclined chair, strangely similar to a dentist's, but covered in black velvet.
— "Please remove your pumps and stockings and take a seat," Sterling ordered, pulling on a pair of white cotton gloves.
Élisa complied, a mocking smile on her lips. Easiest money of my life, she thought.
Sterling nodded, inviting Élisa to lie back. She did so, her white silk blouse contrasting with the dark leather. She crossed her arms over her chest, an instinctive gesture of defiance, but Sterling, with icy courtesy, asked her to place them on the armrests.
— "For science, Mademoiselle. I must observe the ribcage."
He didn't reach for the feathers yet. He started with something far more insidious: his fingers, gloved in white cotton.
Sterling positioned himself to her right. Without a word, he ran the pads of his index fingers along the soles of her bare feet. Élisa didn't move. She stared at the ceiling, mentally counting the LED tiles.
"Easy," she thought. "It’s just superficial pressure."
But Sterling didn’t stop. He found the exact hollow of the arch and began to trace small, slow, almost imperceptible circles. The cotton glided over her skin with the regularity of a metronome.
Suddenly, an electric shock shot up Élisa's leg. It wasn't pain, but a sensation so sharp it took her breath away. Her toes curled with a sharp snap.
— "A reflex?" Sterling noted in a neutral voice, glancing at the monitor.
— "A... a muscle spasm. Nothing more," she lied, her voice slightly higher than usual.
Sterling changed targets. His hands moved up toward Élisa's waist. He didn't tickle her outright; he simply brushed the flanks, just above the hips, where the skin is thinnest.
That was where the wall crumbled.
As soon as his fingers pressed very lightly on the tissue between her ribs, a sound rose in Élisa's throat. A sound she hadn't made in twenty years. A small, muffled, high-pitched giggle, almost childlike.
— "Oh... no..." she whispered, trying to wriggle away from the contact.
— "Is something wrong?" Sterling asked, his fingers continuing their pitiless exploration.
— "Stop... it’s... it’s ridiculous," she managed to articulate between two jagged breaths.
She tried to regain her mask of ice, but her body no longer obeyed her. With every movement Sterling made, her abdominal muscles contracted violently. The laughter, at first contained, began to explode in bursts. She realized with sudden terror that she wasn't just ticklish: she was vulnerable.
She tried to sit up, her eyes bright with involuntary tears of laughter.
— "Alright, I get the principle. I... I think we’re done for today. I’ll return the deposit."
Sterling stopped, but remained standing over her. He pulled the document she had just signed from his pocket.
— "Clause 4.2, Mademoiselle. 'Any unilateral interruption of the test session before the end of the 90-minute protocol results in an immediate cancellation penalty of ten thousand euros.'"
Élisa froze. Ten thousand euros. She didn't have it. She looked at Sterling, then at his gloved hands, then at the peacock feather waiting on the tray.
— "We are only at the seventh minute," he said, picking up a down feather. "Lie back, Élisa. We are resuming."
Élisa lay back down, her heart pounding. It was no longer the calm rhythm of a businesswoman, but that of prey. She closed her eyes, clenching her jaws until it hurt.
"It’s a matter of will," she repeated to herself. "Ignore the sensations. Detach your mind from your nerves."
But Sterling was no amateur. He had detected the breaking point: the flanks.
He seized the peacock feather. The long stem allowed for clinical distance, but the silky barbs at the end were fearsomely precise. He began with Élisa's ribs, just under the underwire of her bra.
The contact was at first a ghost of a caress. Then, with a sharp, rhythmic motion, he flicked the feather into the intercostal spaces.
— "NO!" Élisa yelped.
Her reaction was immediate and electric. Her glasses fell to the floor. Her back arched violently, her hands gripped the edges of the black leather, her knuckles turning white. A convulsive, high-pitched laugh escaped her lips. It wasn't a laugh of joy; it was a pure nervous discharge, a short circuit between her skin and her brain.
— "Mr... Sterling... please... hihi... please!" she managed to gasp, punctuated by loud hiccups.
Every time she tried to catch her breath, he changed the rhythm. The feather now moved down toward her waist, where the skin is thinnest, most reactive. Élisa squirmed, her legs flailing on the footrest, her knees knocking together in a desperate attempt to protect her stomach.
— "You seem very sensitive here," he noted, his voice as steady as ever. "Let’s observe the reaction to a denser stimulation."
He set aside the feather for both his gloved hands. He was no longer just brushing; he was literally "kneading" her flanks with diabolical speed.
That’s when Élisa tipped over. Tears began to roll down her temples, wetting her brown hair. She couldn't stop laughing—a laugh that made her abs ache, that literally cut off her breath. She was drenched in sweat, her skin turning a bright pink from the rush of blood.
Her hands tried to catch Sterling's wrists, but he dodged them with disconcerting agility, forcing her to keep her arms raised, completely exposed.
She no longer spoke words, but jagged onomatopoeias alternated with cries of helplessness. "Ah! No-ho! Haha... hi... ple... stop!"
Her body almost bounced on the chair, each new attack on her ribs sending a jolt through her entire spine.
Sterling stopped abruptly. The silence that followed was almost deafening, disturbed only by Élisa's erratic, wheezing breath. She lay there trembling, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling with an expression of pure incredulity. She felt violated in her dignity—not by him, but by her own body, which had betrayed her so joyfully.
— "We are at fifteen minutes, Élisa," Sterling said, checking his luxury watch. "Your cortisol levels have skyrocketed. It’s fascinating. Now, let’s move on to the brushes on the arches of the feet."
She wanted to scream that she couldn't take anymore, that she was going to faint from laughter, but her gaze met the contract on the desk again. She was trapped. She closed her eyes, already feeling the brush of sable hair against her bare heels.
Sterling placed his fingers on Élisa’s ankles to hold them firmly in the steel rests. The contact was cold, authoritative. She felt a shiver of pure anticipation run down her spine. Her feet, elegantly arched, were now totally exposed, vulnerable under the harsh LED light.
He didn't start with the feather. He chose a Japanese calligraphy brush with long, perfectly supple sable hairs.
— "The human foot has over 7,000 nerve endings," Sterling whispered in an almost hypnotic voice. "The sole is the command center of your archaic reflexes, Élisa. Let’s see how your 'exceptional control' fares here."
He glided the tip of the brush, as light as a breath, from the top of her right big toe, then down slowly, very slowly, toward the heel.
The effect was devastating. Élisa let out a high-pitched cry, a sort of muffled yelp, as her leg shot out violently in a reflex spasm.
— "Hah! No! Not there... hihi... please!"
Her toes curled and then fanned out, moving with a life of their own. The brush continued its relentless journey, now exploring the sensitive hollow of the arch. Every pass sent an electric shock up to her pelvis. She squirmed on the black leather, her hips pivoting frantically to try to move her soles away from this silky torment.
Sterling, seeing she was reaching a breaking point, grabbed a second brush. He attacked both feet simultaneously, using different rhythms: To the right: Rapid, erratic tapping on the ball of the foot. To the left: Long, sinuous strokes drawing eights on her heel.
Élisa tipped into a total, physical, almost painful laughing fit. Her abs were so tight she felt as if they might tear. Pure reflex tears flooded her face, blurring her vision. She tried to pull her legs back, to hide her feet, but Sterling's gloved hands pitilessly brought them back to the center of the light.
— "Aha... hihihe... I... I hate... hihi... this! Sterling... stop! It's too much... it's too much!"
The most disturbing part for her wasn't the laughter, but the sensation of losing her identity. She, the serious 35-year-old woman, the respected professional, was nothing more than a mass of nerves twitching at the end of a brush.
— "You said it was childish, Élisa," Sterling reminded her as he swapped the brushes for a much denser ostrich feather, which he began to brush vigorously against her soles.
Élisa’s laughter became deeper, more guttural—a series of jagged, uncontrollable "Ho-ho-hos." She was out of breath, her chest heaving violently under her silk blouse, now soaked with sweat. She realized with horror that there was still over an hour left in the session. The contract was no longer just a piece of paper; it was a sentence to ecstasy and torment.
The silence that fell back over the room was almost as violent as the assault of the feathers. Sterling removed his instruments from Élisa's feet and drew himself up to his full height, motionless.
Élisa remained slumped on the black leather, her body shaken by residual tremors. Her chest rose in an erratic rhythm, searching for the air she had so cruelly lacked. Her brown hair, usually so perfectly styled, stuck to her temples and neck. She was drenched, the skin of her feet still red and vibrating from the sensory aggression she had just endured.
— "Look at me, Élisa," he ordered in a calm, almost gentle voice.
She didn't move right away. She was ashamed. Ashamed of this laughter that wasn't hers, ashamed of this total loss of composure. She finally raised her head, her hazel eyes glistening with involuntary tears.
Sterling didn't have a sadistic smile; he had the expression of a watchmaker observing a complex mechanism whose breaking point he had just found.
— "Well?" he asked. "Is it still so 'stupid'? Is it still 'childishness' over which you have absolute control?"
Élisa tried to regain her poise, to smooth her silk blouse, but her hands were shaking too much. She tried to harden her gaze, to become the cold professional woman again.
— "It's... it's physiological," she managed to articulate, her voice still raspy. "You are stimulating nerves. Anyone would react that way. It’s not a failure of my will; it’s biology."
Sterling took another step toward her, invading her personal space. He placed a gloved hand on the edge of the chair, right next to her shoulder.
— "Biology is the only truth, Élisa. Everything else—your degree, your seriousness, your disdain—is just a costume you wear to reassure yourself. Here, in this room, the costume is useless. Your body says 'yes' to laughter while your mind screams 'no.' And guess what? Your body wins every time."
He paused, letting his words sink into Élisa's mind. She felt the cold of the steel against her bare feet, a silent promise that rest would be short-lived.
— "You still have seventy-two minutes to go," he resumed. "And we haven't even explored your knees, or your armpits... or the palms of your hands."
Élisa swallowed hard. The mere idea of him touching her armpits sent a flush of heat to her face. She felt trapped by a contract she had signed with a haughtiness that now seemed to belong to another life.
— "What do you want from me?" she whispered, almost defeated.
— "Honesty," he replied, picking up a small silk brush. "Stop pretending you are above this. Accept that you are at my mercy."
He didn't give her time to respond. With a sharp flick, he tilted the back of the chair even lower, exposing her flanks in an even more vulnerable way.
Sterling sketched an almost imperceptible smile. From his tray, he picked up the small black device with rotating silicone heads. A discreet hum, barely a whisper, filled the confined space of the room.
— "The hands, Élisa. We often forget how connected they are to the brain. They are the tools of your intellect, aren't they? It's with them that you sign your contracts, that you type your reports... Let’s see how they react when their social function is stripped away."
He took Élisa's right hand. Her fingers were long and well-groomed—the hand of a 35-year-old woman in control of her environment. But as soon as Sterling turned her palm upward, she felt a surge of panic. It was a position of total surrender.
He didn't use the device right away. He began by passing an ultra-fine silk brush between her fingers, in the sensitive gaps. — "Hi... no... not there..." Élisa tried to close her fist, but Sterling firmly inserted his own thumb to keep the palm open, exposed like a target. Then, he placed the vibrating device at the exact center of her hand.
The effect was electric. It wasn't the intermittent tickle of a feather, but a constant, deep stimulation that seemed to resonate through every bone in her arm.
— "AHAHAH! No! Stop! Sterling... it’s... it’s too strong!"
She twisted in the chair, her body forming an arc. The laughter that burst from her was higher, more jagged. She tried to pull her hand away, but Sterling's grip was iron. The micro-vibrations traveled up to her shoulder, causing involuntary jolts throughout her torso.
Sterling didn't stop there. While the device whirled on her right palm, he used his free hand to frantically tickle her ribs on the left side with his fingers.
Élisa's brain went into sensory overload. She was being assaulted from two sides with two different types of stimuli. To the right: A hypnotic, unbearable vibration that made her feel like her nerves were going to fry. To the left: Precise digital attacks that made her jump and giggle without being able to catch her breath.
— "Ple... hihi... please... haha... please! I... I’m going to... hahahaha!"
She couldn't even finish her sentences. Her eyes were closed, her face flooded with tears, and a strained, purely reflex smile distorted her features. She no longer looked at all like the haughty woman from the start of the session. She was nothing but a human shockwave, totally at the mercy of Sterling's instruments.
Suddenly, he switched off the device. Élisa's hand fell onto the armrest, limp but continuing to twitch in residual jerks. She was exhausted, short of breath, unable even to protest.
— "Look at your hands, Élisa," he said softly. "They are shaking. It's not fear; it's your nervous system no longer knowing how to handle the excess of sensation."
He leaned closer, his face a few centimeters from hers. — "We are only halfway through the time. Does your mind still want to pretend this contract is 'stupid'?"
Élisa opened her eyes. She was broken, but a spark of anger—or perhaps another emotion she wouldn't yet admit to herself—glinted in her pupils. She knew she couldn't back down.
Sterling stepped away for a moment to grab a wide, heavy black satin ribbon. The rustle of the fabric against his cotton gloves echoed like a sentence in the silence of the room.
— "Humans grant 80% of their perception to sight, Élisa," he explained in a hushed voice. "By depriving you of this sense, your brain will desperately try to compensate. Every nerve ending in your skin will become an antenna, every breath of air an assault."
He leaned over her. Élisa caught the faint scent of his cologne—a blend of cedar and cold steel. He slipped the blindfold over her eyes, knotting it with firm precision at the back of her head.
The darkness was instantaneous and absolute.
Deprived of landmarks, Élisa felt her hearing sharpen violently. She heard the creak of the leather under her own weight, the ticking of an invisible clock, and above all... the sound of the instruments Sterling was moving on his tray.
Clink. The sound of metal. Whoosh. The rustle of a feather.
— "Mr. Sterling... I..." she began, her trembling voice betraying her loss of composure.
She didn't know where he was. To her left? To her right? She stayed frozen, muscles tensed to the extreme, waiting for the attack. The void under her bare feet suddenly felt immense.
Suddenly, she felt a warm breath of air near her left ear. — "Relax, Élisa. If you fight, it will be worse."
Without warning, an intense cold sensation touched the hollow of both her knees simultaneously. Sterling was using ice cubes, gliding them slowly. The thermal contrast made her heart leap in her chest.
But before she could even react to the cold, she felt something radically different: the Wartenberg wheel. The small metal spikes began to run along her ribs, alternating with caresses from ostrich feathers.
— "HIHIHE! No-ho! It's... I don't know where... AH!"
Not seeing the instrument coming multiplied the element of surprise tenfold. With every contact, her body reacted with an electric jolt. She could no longer anticipate, no longer mentally prepare. She was like a musical instrument Sterling was playing with cruel virtuosity.
— "Please... haha... I can't see anything... hihi... stop! It's too... haha... unbearable!"
She began to laugh almost hysterically—a laugh of pure sensory panic. Her hands desperately sought Sterling's in the dark, but she only met the void, or worse, a new feather attack where she least expected it.
— "You are magnificent in this surrender, Élisa," Sterling whispered. "Your body has finally stopped lying."
He placed both hands on her hips and began a frantic drumming, moving slowly up toward her armpits—her most critical zone—while she was still plunged into complete darkness.
Élisa was plunged into an abyss of black velvet, where the slightest shiver of air on her skin resonated like a thunderclap. Her senses, deprived of sight, had retreated into touch with a morbid acuity. She heard the rustle of Sterling's gloves—a sharp, almost surgical sound.
— "Here we are, Élisa. The sanctuary of your reflexes," Sterling’s voice whispered, so close she felt his breath on her temple.
His hands moved slowly up her flanks, a light drumming that already made the young woman's back arch. Reaching the upper ribs, he made a cruel pause. Élisa, arms raised and hands clenched on the top of the chair, was panting. She knew what was coming.
Suddenly, without a word of warning, Sterling plunged his index fingers into the hollow of both her armpits simultaneously.
It wasn't a laugh that burst from Élisa, but a kind of strangled cry, a discharge of pure nervous hysteria. Her entire body contracted as if she had received a thousand-volt shock.
— "NO! HAHA! STERLING... NOT THERE! AH! HIHIHE!"
Her legs began to kick the air frantically, her feet searching for a point of support that didn't exist. Sterling used no feathers this time; he used the most fearsome technique: rapid, deep, and incessant digital tickling.
In the darkness of the blindfold, Élisa lost all sense of time and space. She was no longer a 35-year-old woman; she was no longer a brilliant economist. She was nothing but a living shockwave, a sequence of convulsions and laughter so deep they became painful. Reflex tears soaked the black satin of the blindfold.
— "PLEASE... HIHI... PLEASE! I... I CAN'T ANYMORE... HAHAHA!"
Sterling accelerated the pace even more, his fingers exploring every sensitive corner from the shoulder to the pit of the armpit, not leaving her a second to catch her breath. She was holding her breath, her face flushed, her heart drumming against her ribs like a caged bird.
Suddenly, everything stopped.
Sterling withdrew his hands. The silence that followed was frightening. Élisa lay there, arms still raised, her body shaken by residual spasms, her breathing nothing more than an irregular wheeze. She was totally drained, physically and mentally.
He untied the blindfold.
The harsh LED light blinded her for a moment. She blinked, her brown hair in complete disarray, scattered across the black leather. She looked like a shipwreck survivor.
Sterling checked his watch with Olympian calm. — "Ninety minutes exactly. The session is over."
He walked to his desk, filled out a check with a fluid motion, and returned to her. He handed her the paper, but also a glass of fresh water. It took Élisa several long seconds before she could close her trembling fingers around the glass.
— "You held out, Élisa," he said with a new hint of respect in his voice. "Most ask to stop long before, even if it means paying the penalty."
Élisa sat up with the slowness of a centenarian, trying to readjust her wrinkled silk blouse. She looked at the check. Three thousand euros. A fortune for an hour and a half of what she used to call "childishness." She looked up at Sterling.
— "See you next week, Mr. Sterling," she whispered, her voice still cracked.
She stood up, her legs still a bit shaky, and put her pumps back on. As she left, she was no longer thinking about her debts or her professionalism. She was thinking about the fact that she now knew exactly where her greatest weakness lay.
The contract was far from over.
(To be continued)
