chandor864
TMF Novice
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2025
- Messages
- 57
- Points
- 18
The moon, a silver blade suspended above the cliff, failed to pierce the thick canopy of cedars surrounding the Villa Les Glycines. For Leo, this darkness was an ally, a familiar caress. They didn't call him "The Cat" for nothing: he possessed that rare ability to blend into the scenery, to become a mere draft in a closed room.
He crouched near the south terrace, his fine leather gloves testing the resistance of the oak window frame. The house was a masterpiece of anachronism, a bastion of the old nobility that seemed to ignore the existence of laser alarms and 4K cameras.
"Too old for technology, too rich to care," Leo thought with a smile hidden beneath his balaclava.
With a precise movement, he used a diamond tip to score the glass, then a suction cup to remove a perfect circle. A metallic click, almost imperceptible, and the window latch gave way. He slipped inside. The air in the house smelled of beeswax, old paper, and a hint of vintage lavender.
His rubber-soled boots made no sound on the herringbone parquet. His flashlight, set to a narrow red beam to keep his pupils adjusted to the dark, swept across the living room. Bronze hunting trophies, bookshelves sagging under leather bindings, and that famous family portrait: Colonel de Saint-Hilaire, proud mustache and steely gaze.
Leo knew the safe was there, behind the ancestor. It was classic, almost cliché. He approached the painting, his heart beating at a steady rhythm—that of a professional in his element. He swung the frame on its invisible hinges, revealing the grey steel door of a Fichet safe.
He pulled out his stethoscope, pressed it against the cold surface, and began to slowly turn the combination dial. Click. Click. The discs fell one by one in a delicious mechanical whisper.
"You know, my dear, the last number is eight. The date of our first ball."
Leo froze. Blood rushed to his temples. The voice was neither quavering nor frightened. It was steady, almost amused.
He didn't move, fingers still on the cold metal. Slowly, he turned his head toward the monumental staircase in the center of the hall. At the top of the steps, two motionless silhouettes towered over him. Madame de Saint-Hilaire held a lit candle, its flickering flame casting dancing shadows on her wrinkled but disturbingly serene face. Beside her, Edgar, standing straight as an arrow despite being over eighty, rested both hands on a silver pommel sculpted in the shape of a lion's head.
"Good evening, young man," Edgar resumed cordially. "You’ve arrived just in time. The night was promising to be deathly dull."
Leo felt an unknown shiver run up his spine. There was something deeply abnormal about their calm.
Leo remained petrified for a split second, the stethoscope still hanging from his neck like a ridiculous piece of jewelry. In his mind, an escape scenario was already forming: shove the old man, vault over the banister, and disappear into the brush. These two were nothing but paper-mâché obstacles.
Leo watched the old man's slow movements closely, but his athletic brain dismissed him as a negligible threat. However, in a protective reflex, he had to pivot to push away Celestine’s arm, as she had just grabbed his sleeve.
That action was his undoing.
As he temporarily turned his back on the old man, Edgar—hidden in Leo's peripheral blind spot—reached out with a small black box, a compact but powerful civilian model. The bluish crackle was almost inaudible, muffled by the accelerated thumping of Leo’s heart.
The contact was brief, just below the shoulder blade.
The effect was instantaneous. It wasn't pain; it was a total disconnection. Leo’s muscles, usually so reactive, froze in an uncontrollable tetanic contraction. He collapsed like a dead weight, his face hitting the rug, unable to command his arms to break his fall.
While his nerves were still sizzling, the couple sprang into action with a disturbing economy of movement. The old lady sat heavily on his calves, using her own weight to keep his legs pinned to the floor, while her husband, with a steady hand, looped plastic zip-ties around his wrists.
Leo tried to explode, to draw on his athletic power to snap his bonds, but the old man kept the taser just millimeters from his neck.
"Don't struggle, my boy," he whispered in a calm, almost fatherly voice. "Your body no longer belongs to you for the moment."
"Celestine, go get the travel straps!" Edgar requested, never taking his eyes off his prisoner.
Madame de Saint-Hilaire went off with a brisk step to fetch supple leather straps, once used to secure cabin trunks on transatlantic liners.
"Oh, Edgar, look at his hands," she said, observing Leo as he struggled vainly on the floor. "He has such fine skin. It would be a shame to leave marks. Let’s use the bed in the Queen’s Chamber instead."
Leo was dragged to a room with embossed velvet hangings, dominated by a monumental four-poster bed. With surprising leverage, Edgar flipped the burglar onto the feather mattress, which was so soft that Leo felt like he was sinking into a cloud.
"Comfort above all, my boy," Edgar murmured as he fastened the leather straps to the four carved oak pillars.
Within minutes, Leo found himself spread-eagled in an "X" shape, his ankles and wrists firmly moored to the bedposts. He tried to contract his muscles, to break the bonds, but the silk and leather wouldn't give an inch. He was at the mercy of these two smiling specters.
Celestine returned then, pushing a rolling side table that creaked on the parquet. She had no knives, no pliers, but a row of essential oil vials and, most notably, a lacquer box that seemed to contain treasures of softness.
"You have restless feet, Leo. A sign of great sensitivity," she said, uncorking a bottle of peppermint.
She poured a few drops onto the soles of the burglar's bare feet. The coldness of the oil made Leo shiver; he tried to retract his legs. In vain. Edgar sat at the foot of the bed, an immaculate white ostrich feather in hand, while Celestine armed herself with a marten-hair calligraphy brush of formidable fineness.
"The police will put you in a cell," Edgar began, brushing the base of Leo's toes with an airy touch. "But before that, we are going to set your mind free."
The first contact was like an electric shock. The feather glided between his toes, moved up along the arch of his foot, while Celestine, on the other side, drew invisible circles on his ribs, just beneath his armpits.
Leo contracted his abdominals, his breath hitching. An involuntary, high-pitched laugh burst from his throat.
"Stop... mercy... this is ridiculous..." he managed to articulate between two jolts.
"Ridiculous?" Celestine wondered, switching her tool for a firmer brush. "It’s a science, little one. Forced laughter through targeted tickling empties the lungs, purifies the soul, and above all, prevents one from dwelling on their next misdeed."
The fireplace clock struck three. The night was only beginning. The bed, once a symbol of rest, became for Leo the stage of a battle lost in advance against his own reflexes. Every time he thought he had mastered the sensation, Edgar changed the rhythm, alternating silk strokes with expert finger pressure on the most sensitive spots.
"You look like you’re dancing," Edgar teased, observing the prisoner’s desperate contortions. "A true nocturnal choreography!"
Time seemed to stretch like an elastic and absurd substance. As the hours passed, the Queen’s Chamber became a theater for a strange ballet. For Leo, the world had shrunk to the unbearable sensation of silk and feathers on his skin.
By four in the morning, Leo’s laugh was nothing more than a raspy sound, a succession of uncontrollable spasms that burned his lungs. He no longer had the strength to struggle. His muscles, strained to the limit by repeated jolts, were beginning to betray him. Every time he thought he had reached a sort of protective lethargy, Celestine changed tactics.
"Edgar, I think the silk brush has become too predictable," she noted with the tone of a wine-tasting expert. "Let’s try the Japanese calligraphy brush, the one with the wolf hair. It’s much more... incisive."
Edgar nodded, imperturbable. He attacked Leo’s arch with surgical precision, drawing imaginary eights that made the thief’s toes curl in a desperate movement. Leo couldn't even beg anymore. His eyes, bloodshot from laughing and crying with fatigue, stared at the canopy as if salvation might descend from the heavens.
"You know, my boy," Edgar resumed in a soft, almost fatherly voice, while stroking the hollow of his prisoner’s knees, "the human body is a marvel of reactivity. We too often forget how alive we are beneath our clothes."
The de Saint-Hilaires chatted amongst themselves as if they were having tea in the garden. They spoke of the 1931 Colonial Exhibition, the quality of churned butter, and the poetry of Verlaine, all punctuated by Leo’s forced hiccups of laughter.
"A little lavender on the flanks, Celestine?" Edgar suggested. "It will soothe his nerves while making the skin more... receptive."
The ordeal never stopped. When Leo drifted into a micro-sleep of exhaustion, a simple pressure of Edgar’s fingers on his ribs projected him once more into a convulsion of hysterical laughter, driving him close to madness. He was a prisoner of his own nervous system, betrayed by his own senses.
At five-thirty, the light of dawn began to filter through the curtains. The silence of the night was replaced by the first birdsong. Leo, drained of all will, was nothing but an inert mass on the feather bed, shaken now and then by one last residual spasm, like a distant echo of the night's torture.
"I believe he has learned his lesson, Edgar," Celestine whispered, packing her instruments into the lacquer box. "His soul seems much lighter to me now."
Leo’s mind was nothing but a mush of electric sensations. His arms, firmly moored to the bedposts, were completely numb, leaving his armpits totally vulnerable, exposed like a gaping target.
Celestine approached, her eyes sparkling with a strange clarity in the light of the candles that were finishing their burn. She had traded the feather for something more fearsome: her own fingers, thin and agile, rubbing her fingertips together to warm them up.
"Laughter is a door, my little Leo," she whispered. "And we are going to open it wide."
She plunged her hands into the deep hollows beneath the burglar’s arms. These were no longer mere strokes, but a frenetic dance, a percussion of nervous and unpredictable tickles. Leo arched so violently that the oak bed creaked. A piercing cry, half-laugh, half-wail, escaped his chapped lips.
"Oh look, Edgar! He’s trying to fly!" Celestine enthused.
The torment went up a notch. Every time Leo tried to catch his breath, Edgar, remaining at the foot of the bed, dug his thumbs into the arch of his foot to create a sensory diversion, forcing Leo’s brain to process two simultaneous centers of hysteria.
The world around him began to dissolve. The faces of the de Saint-Hilaires became dreamlike masks, floating in a velvet mist. He no longer knew if he was screaming with joy or terror. His abdominal muscles were so tight they felt like burning iron bars. Reason, that thin film that attached him to his life as "The Cat" and a criminal, was crumbling.
"St... op... no... more..." he stammered, unable to articulate a single coherent word.
His mind began to wander. He thought he saw the patterns of the wallpaper come to life and start laughing with him. The ancestral portraits on the walls seemed to nod in rhythm. Every movement of Celestine’s fingers under his arms triggered explosions of laughter like fireworks behind his closed eyelids. He was no longer fighting; he was nothing but a violin string on which these two old people played a demonic score.
Celestine intensified the pace, her fingers exploring every nerve ending with delicate cruelty. Leo tumbled into a sort of ecstasy, a trance where pain and pleasure blurred in one final spasm. He was no longer a thief, he was no longer a man; he had become laughter itself, a pure and wild vibration in the silence of the Villa Les Glycines.
Edgar stood up, adjusted his smoking jacket, and approached Leo’s face. The burglar's mask had long since slipped, revealing the face of a devastated young man.
"One last one for the road?" the old man asked with a mischievous wink, vibrating his fingers just above Leo’s ribs.
The thief groaned, a sound of pure defeat, and Edgar let out a short, dry laugh before beginning to undo the leather straps with ceremonial slowness.
Leo didn't move. He remained spread out like a star on the feather mattress, his arms still raised as if he were still chained to the bedposts. His muscles were twitching with residual tremors, small nervous spasms that ran through his flanks and legs like underground electric shocks.
Celestine stood up, smoothed her dressing gown, and put away her instruments with a satisfied smile. "A charming night, Edgar. Truly. I’m going to make the phone call now."
She left the room with a light step, leaving Edgar alone with his prey. The old man sat on the edge of the mattress, right next to Leo’s sides. He held no weapon, no rope. He simply kept his hands just a few centimeters from the burglar’s flanks, fingers spread, ready to pounce on their target.
"Don't make that face, my boy," Edgar whispered, his steely gaze shining with a mischievous light. "Stay very still. At the slightest muscle twitch, the slightest eyelash flutter attempting an escape, my fingers will resume the tickling. And I guarantee you the second session is always more... intense than the first."
Leo closed his eyes, a tear of fatigue rolling down his cheek. He could have tried to shove him, to bolt for the window, but he no longer had the strength, and the threat of that unbearable sensation—of that laughter that had broken him from the inside—was more effective than a revolver to the temple. He had become a hostage of his own skin.
On the other side of the door, Celestine's voice echoed in the hallway, calm and polite:
"Hello? Police station? Yes, good morning, Monsieur. I am calling because we have a young man at our home. He seems to have lost his way... and his common sense. Yes, he is quite harmless now. He is... shall we say... very relaxed."
Leo heard the receiver click. Edgar didn't flinch. His fingers rose imperceptibly toward the thief’s ribs—a silent reminder of his vulnerability.
"You see, Leo," Edgar resumed in an almost sweet voice as the siren could already be heard approaching in the distance, "you will never forget us. Every time you see a feather or feel a draft under your arms, you will think of the de Saint-Hilaires. That is true justice: it doesn’t just lock you between four walls, it carves itself into your memory."
When the gendarmes entered the room, they found a renowned professional burglar, prostrate, asking for only one thing: handcuffs and the cold silence of a prison cell. Anything but the tickling.
