In The Clutches of Tara Kell (F/M)

[arachnid95]

Okey-doke, how about another story of mine! This one got a lot of positive feedback on DA, and I'm rather fond of it, so I hope you guys enjoy it too! 😀

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In the Clutches of Tara Kell

Dr. Tara Kell frowned as she sifted through her computer files, trying to determine her next subject for study. Or, more accurately, she frowned as she waited for her computer to finish sifting through files; she herself was sitting in her swivel chair, pivoting slightly back and forth and sipping from a steaming mug of coffee.
“Computer, any sign of an ideal candidate yet?” she asked impatiently; she had been waiting for over an hour now.
“None yet, Doctor Kell,” responded a computerized female voice. “Search is only fifty-seven percent complete.”
The doctor sighed and added another cube of sugar to her coffee. “I have the most state-of-the-art, cutting edge computer systems at my disposal here,” she muttered. “In the time it takes to find a test subject, I should be able to find one, capture them, bring them back, and be through with the first stage of the experiment.”
“Apologies, doctor,” responded the computer levelly. “There are over twenty million possible viable candidates at any one time, and your requirements are very selective.”
Dr. Kell sighed again. “Will I at least have my subject by the end of the day?”
“Estimated time to search completion: one hour, seventeen minutes, twelve seconds, mark. Assuming, that is, that an optimum candidate is not found before then.”
“Fine. Alert me when you’ve found one, I’m going to go for a walk. Anything beats sitting here watching you be slow…”
Dr. Kell rose from her chair and exited the room, the automated door whooshing open as she approached, then clunking shut again as soon as she was through.
The doctor was a fine figure of a woman, her curly black hair bouncing attractively around her dark, handsome face as she walked. She had the figure of a model, and likely could have been one had she had the inclination. Of course, she had no such inclination; she was far too intelligent for a career like that.
She was almost a cliché in her degree of success; by the time she was seventeen, she had graduated cum laude from UC Berkeley with PhDs in physics, biology, and psychology, and now had, at the relatively-young age of twenty three, her own laboratory.
It was through the halls of this lab that she walked, her pretty face furrowed in a scowl of impatience and frustration. The only sounds to be heard were the click of her high-heeled shoes and the ever-present background hum of machinery, going about its various jobs throughout the facility.
Reaching a door, Dr. Kell pressed the palm of her hand into a pad to the right of it. The pad glowed briefly as it analyzed the whorls and ridges of her handprint, and the door opened with a pneumatic hiss, allowing her access to the room beyond.
Contained within the room was the site of her next experiment, currently being prepped by lab-coated assistants, scurrying around with clipboards and fine-tuning the various pieces of equipment, making sure everything was just right. Dr. Kell, they knew, would settle for nothing less than perfection.
“Ah, D-Doctor!” stammered one of the assistants, a young, bookish little man with thick glasses, as he rushed to his boss’s side. “W-We were j-just making some l-last minute adjustments, m-ma’am. I’m s-sure you’ll fine everything absolutely p-p-perfect!”
“Mm. I’d better,” muttered Dr. Kell. “We don’t want any to make mistakes like the last head assistant, now do we?”
The man shuddered involuntarily. His predecessor had disappeared quite suddenly after one of the lesser assistants, while under her supervision, had accidentally left a piece of equipment on overnight, so it had eaten up its power by the time Dr. Kell had needed it. He wasn’t entirely certain what had happened to her, but there were rumors about what Dr. Kell did to head assistants who failed her, and he most assuredly did not wish to find out for himself whether they were true.
“I p-promise, Duh-Doctor, ev-everything’s being checked and d-double checked to m-make sure that nuh-nothing goes wr-wrong…”
“Yes, yes, fine,” interrupted Dr. Kell. “Now stop talking. You know I can’t stand that aggravating stutter of yours. Oh, and go heat this up for me, it’s gone cold.”
She shoved her coffee cup into the head assistant’s hands, and he scampered off to do as he was bidden. Dr. Kell stood with her hands on her hips and observed as her employees bustled about.
The assistants worked as hard as they could, knowing their boss was watching. They didn’t mind working for her; the pay was good, as long as you didn’t ask too many questions, and she wasn’t a bad boss, really. She could be quite nice at times, in fact. It’s just that she hadn’t had a new test subject in some weeks, and as they all knew, she had a tendency to get cranky without a new subject to experiment on.
So they toiled like a colony of ants, doing everything in their power to please their queen. They lubricated, they polished, they calibrated, they buffed, until every piece of equipment in the room was in top-notch condition.
The head assistant returned, carrying a newly-steaming mug of coffee in one hand and his clipboard in the other. “Y-Your coffee, D-Doctor.”
“Ooh, and you topped it off, even,” she commended. “Good boy.”
“A-And I have my f-final report,” he continued, passing her his clipboard. “I th-think you’ll find everything to b-be in order.”
As Dr. Kell scanned the report, a smile slowly spread across her pretty face. “Excellent work, Downey… uh, Donald…”
“Donahue, ma’am.”
“Donahue. Yes. I’m very pleased; you seem to be a significant improvement on that vacuous imbecile who last held your position. Perhaps you’ll stick around a bit longer than she did.”
Donahue breathed a mental sigh of relief, as did every assistant within earshot. She was pleased; they were all in the clear—for now.
“Doctor Kell,” sounded the computer’s voice from the PA system. “A viable candidate has been found. Your approval is requested.”
“Even more good news!” exclaimed the doctor; her mood was improving every moment. “Alright, everyone, finish up and get out. I want this room empty by the time I return.”
The assistants murmured their ascent and began to wrap up their tasks as Dr. Kell turned sharply about and strode out of the room, back down the hall and to the central computer room, where she had been before.
“Alright, computer, let’s see this new candidate.”
“One moment, Doctor…” A few seconds later, an image appeared on the screen, alongside a wall of information. The image was of a handsome boy of about eighteen years, with messy blonde hair, brown eyes, a big, goofy grin and freckles. A caption below the photo revealed his name to be Daniel J. Henderson.
“Ooh, he’s a cutie,” remarked Dr. Kell. “You’re sure he fits the bill?
“He possesses all of the traits you requested in the search, as well as several I took the liberty of searching for in addition, being traits you have often requested in the past. I believe you will find him to be the ideal test subject.”
She read through the data, her grin broadening with each line, until she finally let loose with a girlish squeal of delight. “Oh, he’s perfect! I can hardly wait to bring him in!” She paused long enough to clear her throat and regain her composure. “Approval granted. Please dispatch the field operatives.”
“Already done, Doctor. Estimated time until arrival: thirty-two minutes, forty-five seconds, mark.”
Dr. Kell smiled again. Things were going far better than expected. She had a feeling that this experiment was going to be one of the best yet…

Daniel sighed with a combination of weariness and contentment—the kind of sigh every high school student utters when the final bell rings on Friday afternoon. He was on his way home—walking, as usual. It was a long walk, but he didn’t mind too much; the weather was perfect, and it gave him plenty of time to himself.
Daniel was as handsome in real life as he was in his photo, if not more so. His good-looking face was complemented by his thin, yet athletic frame—a frame which said that although he didn’t actually participate in athletics, he still spent a fair amount of time out of doors.
To look at him, you would expect him to be popular, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t bullied or anything; on the contrary, people who knew him liked him very much. He was just introverted, preferring to fade into the background, more content by himself than surrounded by people. He had a few friends, but he only really saw them at lunchtime. After school, he preferred to be by himself with his thoughts.
Fortunately for him—and, as it will turn out, for Dr. Kell—his route home was a bit off the beaten path. None of his fellow students lived in the direction he did, so apart from occasionally seeing someone out in front of their house, mowing their lawn or washing their car, he had a whole thirty minutes to himself.
He wiped a small amount of sweat off his forehead as he walked; it was nearing the end of the year, and the weather was growing warm. Even though he was dressed for it, in a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals, he was nonetheless starting to sweat just a little.
The end of the year—those words rang in his head, dominating his thoughts. In just a couple of short months, he’d be graduating. The idea both excited him and stressed him out. He wasn’t sure he was ready to go on to college yet, to leave high school behind. He hadn’t made many memories there, sure, but still…

A field operative crouched in the branches of a tree, his binoculars trained on Daniel. “Target acquired. Awaiting orders.” He spoke in a whisper so low that even the wind could have overridden his words, but he hardly needed to. Daniel was so lost in thought, preoccupied with his musings about graduation and college, that he could have shouted and Daniel wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. Among other things, it was this very tendency towards reverie that made him such a prime target—he would never see them coming. And with no one else around, no one else would see them coming either.
“Do you have a clear shot?” came the reply, issued from the field commander, who was sitting in the front seat of a van just around the corner.
“Affirmative,” responded the operative, pulling from a holster around his waist a lightweight pistol, loaded with a miniscule tranquilizer dart. He trained the pistol’s sights on the back of Daniel’s bare neck, his finger teasing the trigger.
“Then you are good to go. Let ‘er rip.”

Daniel’s worries about college were interrupted by a sharp sting on the back of his neck. “Ow! Frigging bees…” he muttered. He touched the back of his neck with one hand, expecting to feel a swelling lump, but finding something else instead. Puzzled, he plucked it out of his skin and held it up to his eyes. It looked like a tiny dart, no bigger than a splinter and no thicker than a hair.
“What the… what is this?” he asked himself aloud. Then he felt his knees start to grow weak. He staggered a little, his vision starting to get all fuzzy. He dropped to one knee and held his swimming head in his hands, groaning. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness completely was a number of black-garbed figures—ninjas?—exiting a white van and running towards him…

Dr. Kell was once again in her swivel chair, pivoting back and forth with her cup of coffee, only this time she had a contented smile on her face. Now that her latest test subject was forthcoming, she could afford to wait. Still, she was keeping tabs on the whole operation, watching on the gigantic computer screen as live feeds from cameras in the operatives’ helmets documented every stage of the operation. She smiled, shark-like, as she watched Daniel happily walking home, and couldn’t suppress a gleeful giggle as the tranquilizer dart brought him down. She looked on in eager anticipation as the operatives dragged his unconscious form into the back of the white van and began to drive off.
“Recalculating estimated time until arrival,” stated the computer. “Seven minutes, sixteen seconds, mark.”
“We’re ahead of schedule!” exclaimed the doctor, clapping her hands with delight. “Excellent! I’ll have plenty of time to take it nice and slow with him, just the way I like it!”
She got up from her chair and returned to the experiment room. As she had commanded, the room was free of assistants, leaving it full of nothing but her gleaming equipment. She bounced jauntily around the room, humming a little tune as she inspected each tool and machine individually. Her employees had indeed done a good job; there wasn’t a screw out of place.
“Simply wonderful! I shall have to reward my assistants for their marvelous job—especially Donlo… Or was it Duncan? Oh, never mind. Whatever his name is, he’ll be getting a raise for sure…”
“Doctor Kell, the operatives have arrived with your subject,” declared the computer. “They are now bringing him to the sub-level holding cells…”
“No,” cut in the doctor, a satisfied grin on her face. “Have them bring him directly to the experiment room. I want to begin right away.”
“Yes doctor, relaying your orders now.”
Dr. Kell settled into a chair in the corner of the room, her fingers steepled and her face cracked into an anticipatory grin. No doubt about it, this was going to be fun.

 

[arachnid95]

Daniel awoke slowly. He felt as though someone had put a vice over his frontal lobe and lined his throat with sandpaper. He opened his eyes slowly, keeping them cautiously squinted, just in case he woke up somewhere bright. He needn’t have worried; wherever he was, the lights had been dimmed to a gentle glow. He opened his eyes all the way and sat up slowly. He looked to his left and saw, on a little bedside table, a glass of water and a single, disk-shaped white pill. Aspirin. Someone loved him.
He took the pill with a swig of water and was surprised to feel his headache vanish almost instantly; this was some strong stuff. He gulped down the rest of the water as he looked around, trying to make heads or tails of his surroundings.
He seemed to be on some kind of table, only one end of it was slightly raised—the end his head had been on. A half-cylinder of plush leather had been directly under his head, acting as a sort of pillow, and a cotton blanket covered his body from the chest down.
The room itself had, as far as he could tell in the low lighting, off-white walls and a tile floor. A menagerie of soft beeps, whirs, and hums came from all directions, and dark geometric shapes lay against the surrounding walls. He guessed he was in some kind of hospital room, then, although this was the weirdest bed he’d ever seen. Plus, something was off, but he couldn’t put his finger on what…
“Ah, glad to see you’re awake, sweetie!” came a female voice from the dark corner of the room, startling him. “How are you feeling?”
“Um, okay, I guess…” he answered, confused. “I mean, that aspirin really helped…”
“My own formula. Extremely fast-acting, isn’t it?” Daniel saw a shape move in the corner, a shape that stood up and took on the form of a human being. “Now watch your eyes. I’m going to turn the lights up now, Daniel, so we can see each other properly.”
The woman walked over to a far wall—Daniel heard the click of high-heels on the tile—and flipped a switch. The lights slowly increased in brightness, casting their light around the room. Daniel’s breath caught in his throat as he saw the woman for the first time.
She was a stunningly beautiful African-American woman with gorgeous black hair, wire-rimmed glasses and a white lab coat. Daniel couldn’t help allowing his eyes to roam up and down her body, taking in her every curve. He felt his cheeks grow warm with blush and he forced himself to avert his eyes, lest she think him a pervert.
“My name is Doctor Tara Kell, Daniel,” she said, striding towards him with her hands behind her back and a smile on her lovely face. “I’m sure you have plenty of questions, am I correct?”
“Uh, y-yeah…” stammered Daniel, trying hard to regain his composure. “Like, what happened to me, exactly?”
Dr. Kell held up a tiny vial containing the little dart that had struck Daniel. “You were shot with this. It contains a powerful sedative—it knocked you out pretty hard.”
“A tranq dart??” exclaimed Daniel incredulously. “Who would shoot me with a tranq dart?”
“Someone who needed you subdued, of course,” responded the doctor coolly as she put the dart down on the bedside table.
“So… am I in the hospital, then?”
Dr. Kell smiled. “No, not quite. You’re in my laboratory.”
“Laboratory?” Daniel felt a growing sense of wrongness in his gut at the sound of the word. “What do you mean? What kind of laboratory?”
Dr. Kell wheeled away the bedside table as she spoke. “Well, you see, I happen to be a scientist, Daniel. I have a number of experiments that need conducting, and you have some of the traits I need in a test subject.”
“Test sub…? Oh god, y-you can’t be serious!” Daniel’s eyes grew wide with horror as the reality of his situation dawned on him. “You shot me with that dart! You kidnapped me!”
“I did no such thing!” responded the doctor indignantly. “One of my operatives did. Granted, he did so on my behalf, but we really must be precise with our language, you know.”
Daniel wasn’t listening to her semantics lecture. Images flooded his brain of all manner of torturous things that could be done to him. He imagined being electrocuted, dissected alive, taken apart piece by piece, forced to listen to country music. “Please, let me go! I don’t want to be a lab rat! Please, don’t hurt me!” Panicking, Daniel tried to get off the table, but found to his dismay that he couldn’t—something was holding him in place at the ankles.
“Shhh, relax, Daniel,” said the doctor soothingly, gently but firmly pushing Daniel back down onto the table. “The experiments won’t hurt a bit, I promise.”
Daniel wasn’t reassured. “Oh god… why c-can’t I move?”
Dr. Kell grinned and slipped the blanket off of him. He looked down and realized with a jolt that his ankles were locked firmly into a short metal wall attached to the table with padded holes cut into it.
“W-What the hell is this??” he demanded tremulously, wiggling his sandal-clad feet; he could just see the tips of his toes over the top of the wall.
“They’re called ‘stocks,’ sweetie,” replied the doctor. “They’re meant to hold you in place for the experiments. I’m willing to let the rest of your body stay free, but if you struggle too much, I may have to restrain you, so I would advise you to remain calm.”
He tried to calm himself down; just having his legs trapped like this was bad enough. He didn’t want to be restrained any further. He took a deep, shaky breath and lay back down on the table. “Tell me just one thing, Doctor Kell… Exactly what kind of experiments are you going to do on me?”
At this, Dr. Kell smiled. Daniel didn’t like the smile. “Here’s what’s going to happen, hon. I’m going to tickle you. I’m going to tickle these cute little feet of yours until you can’t take anymore—and then I’ll tickle them some more. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
Daniel’s heart just about stopped. He hated to be tickled. No, scratch that; “hate” isn’t strong enough a word. He loathed, detested, despised being tickled. It bordered on a phobia, really. He would almost rather she forced him to listen to country music.
“NO! Please, not that! Don’t tickle me! I’ll do anything you want, just don’t tickle my feet!” Daniel tried desperately to pull his feet through the holes in the stocks, but they were secured too tightly.
Dr. Kell only grinned. “Oh, come now! It’s only tickling!” she admonished as she began to undo the straps on Daniel’s sandals. “You’re welcome to keep begging though. I love it when my subjects beg.”
Daniel could only look on helplessly as his only protection was removed. He curled his toes in fear as his soft, ticklish bare feet were uncovered, leaving them vulnerable to whatever this maniacal madwoman had in store for them.
“Oooh, look how cute your feet are!” she gushed, wiggling his left big toe; even this tiny action was enough to make him snort. “You know, I usually prefer to tickle girls. Most of the time, they have cuter, softer feet, and I love their high-pitched shrieks of laughter. But your feet are just about the most adorable I’ve ever seen on a boy, and something tells me that you’ll be laughing just as high and loudly as any girl once I really get going!”
Daniel blushed; his high-pitched voice had been a source of embarrassment since ninth grade. “Please, doctor, I-I don’t want be tickled! Please, don’t do this!”
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but you’re the best possible match for the set of experiments I have in mind,” she responded, not sounding very sorry at all. “Don’t worry, you’ll come out of this just fine, I promise. Well, you might be a little bit… different…” She illustrated her meaning by twirling one finger in a circle an inch from her temple. “But it’s not like I’ll be tickling you to death or anything…”
“Oh, like being tickled to insanity is any better?” retorted Daniel. “You can’t do this to me! My parents will know I’m missing, and—MMPH!” His spiel was interrupted by the sudden sensation of long fingernails slowly gliding across his freshly bared soles.
“Nice try, honey. Your parents are away for the weekend, and I have no intention of keeping you more than a day or two anyway.” She smiled hungrily as she stroked her fingers up and down the soft skin in front of her, delighting in the adorable way his toes curled and in how cute he looked trying to hold in his giggles.
“Ngh! N-NO!! S-Stahap, please!” Dr. Kell’s nails were really just teasing, but their slow, sensual touch was enough to electrify Daniel’s nerves and bring him to the brink of tears.
“Oooh, who’s a ticklish little boy?” crooned the doctor softly, her nails gracefully sweeping across the bottoms of his feet. “Coochie coochie coooo…”
The teasing was too much for him. Daniel’s laughter burst out of his mouth like a torrent of water out of a broken dam. “PFFFFAhahahahahahehehahahaha!! Nohoho, dohon’t doho thahahat!!”
“Wow, you really are a ticklish one!” chuckled Dr. Kell. “I’m barely touching you and you’re already near hysterical, and we haven’t even begun the actual experiments yet!”
Daniel’s shoulders shook as he laughed himself silly, his bare feet being subjected to the most maddeningly gentle of tickles. “Come oooooon, let me gohohohoahahahaha!! IhI’m behehegging yoooou!”
“Hmph, looks like you’re a whiny one too…” Dr. Kell playfully scolded. She removed her nails from Daniel’s soles and let him breathe. “If that’s really all it takes to get you laughing this hard, then you are soooo in for it, Danny-boy!”
“Don’t… call me that…” Daniel huffed. “I h-hate… being called Danny…”
Suddenly, his words were drowned in laughter as Dr. Kell began to attack anew, this time skittering her nails rapidly over his soles. “I don’t much care what you hate, little man!” she said, drinking in Daniel’s delicious laughter. “I can call you whatever I want, and there’s nothing you can do about it!”
“AAAAhahahahahahahaha!! Nohohoho, dohon’t tihihickle mehehehe!!” His toes wriggled like things possessed, desperately trying their best to alleviate the ticklish sensations threatening to rob him of his sanity. “Ahahahahahaha okahahahay! Ahahahaha I’m sahahaharry!!”
Dr. Kell smirked as she withdrew her fingers again. “Hm-hm, that’s more like it! Now then, let’s get on with the first experiment, shall we?”
She stood up and crossed the room to a small counter, picking up a clipboard and a pen—and a feather. The sight of the fluffy plume sent a shiver down Daniel’s spine.
“Now then, this is just a preliminary test,” she said as she returned to her seat with her supplies. “This will gauge how ticklish you are on the various parts of your feet so I know where best to tickle you. I want you to let your laughter out; no holding it back. Do you understand?”
The last thing he wanted was to be tickled by that feather, but he knew he’d better behave; lord knows what she might do to him if he didn’t do what she wanted. Besides, maybe if he complied with her wishes, he might get out of this with his sanity intact after all. He nodded mutely, biting his lower lip.
“Good. Now then, let’s start with your heels…” Lightly gripping the feather between her thumb and forefinger, she began to gently stroke the feather across Daniel’s heels.
Daniel began to giggle, allowing his laughter to flow uninhibited from his lips as he’d been told to. “Hehehehehehehahahahaha!! Ohoh god, that tihihickles!”
“Mm, of course it does,” replied Dr. Kell as she swirled the feather around each heel. “Tell me, Daniel, how much does it tickle, on a scale of one to ten?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the tickling long enough to think. “Uhuhuhum… S-Seheven!”
The doctor scribbled a note on her clipboard. “Alright, let’s try your soles.” She moved the feather up to lightly caress Daniel’s smooth arches, driving his laughter up an octave.
“AAAhahahahahahahahahaha!! Nohohoho, ahahahahahaha stahahahap!! Ahahahahahahahahaha!!”
“Well? How much does it tickle here?” she asked, the feather continuing to make its slow rounds on his soft soles.”
“Ahahahahahahahahaha!! Eheheight!! Ahahahahaha stahahap!!”
“Mm-hm, good,” she said absently, writing something else down. “And how about these cute little toesies of yours?” The feather brushed back and forth across all ten of Daniel’s wiggling digits.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHahahahahahaha!!! Noho, not my tohohohohoes!! Ahahahahaha n-nihihihine!!”
“Oooh, that’s a good spot!” giggled Dr. Kell as she recorded his answer. “But I’ll bet there’s an even better one… here!”
Daniel screamed with laughter as she began to saw the feather back and forth between his toes. “EEEEEEYAAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Nohohoh, not THEHEHEHEHERE!!”
“How much does it tickle, sweetie?” asked Dr. Kell as she weaved the feather through his toes, making sure to tickle all eight gaps.
“T-TEHEHEHEHEN!! Ahahahahahahahahahahaha ihit’s a TEHEHEN!!”
The doctor grinned and pulled the feather out of Daniel’s toes. “Very nice! Good to know how ticklish these toes are!” She made another note on her board and, to Daniel’s relief, put the feather in an inside pocket of her lab coat.
“Guh… p-please tell me th-that’s it…”
Dr. Kell almost laughed out loud. “Haha, of course not, silly boy! We’re just getting started!”
Daniel groaned loudly. “Pleeeeease, I can’t take any more! Just get someone else, please! There’s gotta be someone else you can use, someone who likes being tickled!”
The doctor merely shook her head. “Oh, dear boy, you simply don’t understand. One of the traits I need is your hatred of being tickled; it will be an important factor in one of my experiments later on.”
Daniel whimpered resignedly and propped himself up on his hands. It looked as though there was no getting out of this, no matter what. “Well, can I at least have, like, breaks or something every so often? Like, to pee and stuff?”
“Oh yes, of course, dear. I’m not cruel, after all!” Dr. Kell chuckled and consulted her notes. “Right, let’s see then. The first item on the agenda is the testing of my neurostimulation device.”
“N-Neuro-what now?” stuttered Daniel nervously. “That sounds painful…”
Dr. Kell smiled. “Hardly, dear. Watch, you’ll see in a minute.” She pulled from within her lab coat a small remote control and pressed a button on it. A panel opened in the ceiling, and through it emerged what looked alarmingly like a laser beam, mounted on a swiveling base like a turret.
“You see, Danny,” she began, ignoring Daniel’s cringe, “This beam is designed to stimulate whatever nerves it comes into contact with in such a way as to produce an artificial gargaletic effect.”
“…What?”
Dr. Kell shot him a look. “It’s a laser that tickles you.”
“Oh.” This explanation did nothing to make the device look any less terrifying.
“Now then, this little toy is brand new, designed by yours truly,” continued the doctor. “I’m going to test it on you, to make sure it works. You really should be honored; you’ll be the first person in history to be tickled by laser!”
“Yippee,” Daniel muttered sarcastically. “I finally get to live out my dream.”
“Oh, hush,” said Dr. Kell. “You’ll be fine.” She reached up and maneuvered the laser so that it was aimed squarely at the soles of Daniel’s feet. Daniel bit his lip and trembled slightly.
“Alrighty then, you ready?” inquired the doctor, one finger hovering above a button on her remote.
“N-No…”
“Well, tough luck, kiddo, because here we go!” Her finger lowered and pressed the button. The neurostimulation ray made a high-pitched “fweeeeee” sound as it charged up, then emitted a glowing purple beam out of its barrel.
As soon as the beam touched his bare feet, Daniel leaned his head back and started to howl with laughter. “GYAAAAAhahahahahahahahahahaha!! Ohmigahahahahahad, what the hehehehell??!”
“Yay, it’s working!” Dr. Kell squealed girlishly and jumped up and down in excitement. “What does it feel like?”
“GAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Ihit TIHIHIHIHIHICKLES!!” Daniel thought for sure he was going to go out of his mind.
“Well, yeah, I know that,” she replied impatiently. “But specifically, what it feel like?”
“It just TIHIHIHIHICKLES!!!” Daniel couldn’t describe the sensation if he tried. It was as though each nerve in his feet was being tickled in a different way—and none of them were pleasant.
“Ugh. You’re no help. Hm, perhaps if I turn up the power…” Dr. Kell turned a dial on the remote. The beam’s whir became higher, the glow more intense, and Daniel’s laughter louder and more hysterical.
“NAAAAAAAhahahahahaha!! Make it STAHAHAHAP!!” Daniel pounded on the table under him with his fists, tears of mirth streaming from the corners of his eyes.
“Come on, Daniel, just try to describe the sensation!” urged Dr. Kell. “I need to know what kind of effect it has!”
“AHAHAHAHAHA I CAHAHAHAHAHAN’T!! Ahahahahaha I d-dohon’t know how to descrihihibe ihit!!”
The doctor was growing frustrated. “Well, maybe if I make it even more intense, you’ll be able to pinpoint the words you’re looking for, hmm?”
Daniel didn’t like the sound of that at all. Fortunately for him, however, as soon as she turned the dial again, the beam flickered and stopped, the device itself making a distinct powering-down noise as a puff of smoke issued from it.
“Dammit!” swore Dr. Kell. “I overloaded the circuits!”
“Th-Thank… god…” panted Daniel as he gasped for breath on the table.
“Oh shut up!” snapped the doctor. She looked at the broken laser and sighed. “Ah well, at least I know it works. Sort of…” She scrawled something down on her clipboard and pressed a button on the remote. The laser retracted back into the ceiling, the panel closing behind it.
“Well, that’s the first experiment down. I’ll give you a moment to rest—we don’t want you passing out, after all—and then we’ll move on to the next!”
“No! Please, n-no more experiments!” Daniel pleaded. “I c-can’t take anymore tickling like that!”
“Oh, pooh! You’re a big boy, I’m sure you can take plenty more…” Dr. Kell grinned tauntingly at him. She so loved to mock her subjects. “Besides which, your vitals are being constantly monitored. There’s zero chance of you suffering from any adverse effects from the tickling—at least, not unless I want you to…”
Daniel fell back on the table, covering his face with his hands. He wasn’t sure how he could survive any more of this. “Can I at least get a drink of water?”
“Of course, sweetie!” replied the doctor brightly. “I’ll have my head assistant bring you a glass.” She walked to a speaker in the wall and pressed the red button underneath it. “Dorian, would you be so kind as to bring out guest a glass of water?”
A moment’s pause, then the reply came back through the speaker. “Y-Yes Doctor, of c-c-course. Um, i-it’s Donahue, though…”
“Whatever. Just bring the water.” She moved away from the speaker and walked back towards Daniel. “Now then, what say we relax you a bit, hm?”
Daniel lifted his head a little as she approached his bare feet, then yelped when she felt her touch them. But he relaxed when he realized that she wasn’t tickling—she was massaging. “Ohhhh. Mmm. Wow…..”
Dr. Kell chuckled. “Hm-hm. Feel good, Daniel?” She pressed her thumbs into his soles, kneading the skin like soft dough and eliciting moans of pleasure from her captive.
“Mmmm… y-yeah…” he murmured. “Much better than tickling…”
“Well, enjoy this while you can, because we’re going back to the tickling in just a few minutes,” warned Dr. Kell. “This is just sort of cleansing the palate, you know. Relaxing your nerves so that every time I tickle you feels like the first time. After all, we can’t have you getting desensitized to my tickling, now can we?”
Daniel was tempted to make some smart retort, but he thought better of it; it would not be wise to insult the crazed tickler while she was massaging his feet.
A minute later, the door to the room hissed open, and Donahue entered, carrying a large, frosty glass of ice water. “H-Here you are, s-sir,” he stammered, handing it to Daniel, who took it gratefully and chugged it all down in one go.
“Umm. Thanks bro,” he said as he handed the glass back to the assistant.
“Yes, thank you Dodds. Now, you’d best be off; we still have a lot to do.”
Donahue opened his mouth to correct his boss again, then thought better of it and turned to leave. As he walked out the door he paused and turned around to look at Daniel. He gave him a look of sympathy and a thumbs-up of encouragement, then the door shut again.
“Alrighty, Danny, time—oh, stop it, already!—time to start the next experiment!”
Daniel whimpered. “Oh god, please no…”
Ignoring his pathetic plea, Dr. Kell consulted her notes again. “Ooh, goody! You’re going to be testing out another invention of mine!”
“W-What is it this time?” he asked, his toes curling in dread. “Some… atomic tickle-gun, or something?”
The doctor smiled mischievously as she walked towards a cabinet against one wall of the room. “Nothing so fancy, this time. No, you’ll be testing this!” From out of the cabinet she pulled a glass bottle filled with some kind of clear, slightly viscous liquid labeled “Formula #8.”
“And just what is that?” inquired Daniel, genuinely curious. He couldn’t imagine how a bottle of weird liquid could tickle him.
“This, my dear boy, is a rather special kind of oil I created myself.” She held the bottle aloft, allowing the fluorescent lights to illuminate its contents. “I haven’t come up with a good name for it yet, though…” she added with a note of mild embarrassment.
“Uh-huh. Okay. And, uh, what’s it do?”
“Well, just wait a second and I’ll show you!” she said in a tone of mock annoyance.
She uncorked the bottle and poured a bit of the oil into her hands, then began to rub it onto Daniel’s bare soles.
“Yipe! It’s freezing!” Daniel yelped, jumping as Dr. Kell massaged her weird oil into his feet.
“Yeah, sorry about that. It feels a lot better when it’s warmed, I would imagine.”
Daniel made a face. “Mm. Yeah. Wouldn’t hold my breath on that, it feels kinda gross…” The oil was sticky and slick at the same time, in a way that reminded him of… no, best not go there. He cringed a little as some of it oozed between his toes.
“Oh, don’t be a baby,” she scolded as she massage the oil onto his feet. “Besides, how the oil feels by itself is the least of your problems…” She smirked and finished oiling Daniel’s soles, then wiped her hands off on a small hand towel.
Daniel shivered a little as the cool air of the lab chilled his moistened soles. “Okay, so that was… weird, but what exactly does it have to do with tickling?”
Dr. Kell giggled. “Oh, sweet naïveté… You see Daniel, any kind of lubricant on the bottoms of the feet—baby oil, for instance—makes the skin much more slippery and friction-resistant. As a result, whatever I care to use on your soles will tickle that much more.”
At this his eyes grew wide and his skin paled a bit. “Tickle m-more? Oh god…”
“Ah, but that’s just with normal oil!” continued the doctor as she walked back over to the cabinet. “My special oil has the added benefit of containing a sort of nerve-rejuvenator, an extra little boost to your nerves’ sensitivity. You should begin to feel it working now…”
Indeed, Daniel was beginning to notice a peculiar tingle on every inch of skin covered by the oil. In addition, the air suddenly seemed even colder than before…
Dr. Kell put the bottle back into the cabinet and pulled out something else—two somethings, in fact, but Daniel couldn’t see what they were from where he was. “And with these two effects combined, the next, oh, thirty minutes or so should be loads of fun!” she concluded, a note of pride in her voice.
Daniel started to tremble; the idea of being tickled while at double—maybe even triple—his normal sensitivity was terror incarnate to him. “Y-You can’t be serious! Please, I’m ticklish enough as it is!”
Dr. Kell strode over to his glistening, anxiously squirming bare feet. “Oh, but you can always stand to be a bit more ticklish!” Grinning, she revealed the objects she had procured from the cabinet—a pair of hard-bristled hairbrushes.
“Um, w-what are you gonna do with those?” Daniel asked apprehensively, although he had a sneaking suspicion he already knew.
For an answer, Dr. Kell merely grinned even wider and began to mercilessly scrub the bottoms of his oiled feet with the brushes.
Daniel let loose with an almighty wail of hysterical laughter. “YAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! OHOHOHO GOD NOHOHOHO!! AHAHAHAHA PLEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHA! N-NO MOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I CAHAHAHA!!”
“I’m sorry, dear, you’re going to have to speak more clearly, I can’t understand you…” taunted the doctor. She was deeply enjoying the sight of Daniel’s toes writhing as his slick, shiny soles were raked by her brushes.
Daniel, meanwhile, could hardly even form a coherent thought, let alone a coherent sentence. The oil had done exactly what Dr. Kell had promised it would. The hairbrushes glided with almost zero resistance across his soles, forcing his laughter to shoot out of his mouth at an earsplitting volume.
After what seemed like an eternity, Dr. Kell finally stopped scrubbing. “Well! I think my little oil is a definite success!” she exclaimed. “Mind you, it didn’t last quite as long as I’d hoped it would…”
“Guh… y… you… y-you’re insane!” huffed Daniel between desperate gasps for air. “You’re f-freaking psycho!”
Dr. Kell shrugged. “That’s entirely possible. But at least I’m a functioning psycho.” She stood up and returned the hairbrushes to their place in the cabinet, then brought a hand towel over to wipe the excess oil off of Daniel’s feet. “At least you’ll be happy to know that I’ve only got a couple more experiments to do…”
Daniel was not reassured by this. He continued to pant, giggling a little as Dr. Kell cleaned off his feet. “And j-just what… hehehehehe! Are… those experimehehents?”
Dr. Kell smiled mischievously at him once again. “Oh, you’ll find out soon enough…” she said mysteriously as she finished drying off his feet and put the towel away.
Daniel scowled at her. “Alright, I’ve had just about enough of you and your psychotic-ass experiments! I demand that you let me go right now, or I swear to god, I’ll…”
“You’ll do what, exactly?” interrupted Dr. Kell, a small frown of annoyance on her face. “You’re in no position to be making threats, and I detest being spoken to like that.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t seem to care what I detest, now do you?” retorted Daniel. He knew he should shut up, but he was mad, and he needed to vent. “So why, oh Doctor Freaken-stein, should I give a damn about what you detest??”
The doctor glared at him silently for a moment, then pulled her remote control out again and pressed a button. A moment later, what little freedom Daniel had was robbed from him as black straps shot out of the table and wrapped themselves around his wrists and torso, pinning him down with his arms at his sides.
“H-Hey, wait…” stammered Daniel, his anger suddenly gone. He struggled as best he could against the straps, but they didn’t yield even the tiniest bit.
“I tried to be nice,” sighed the doctor dramatically. “I tried to make this as painless for you as possible. But then you decided to be rude to me, and now I think you need some punishment…”
Daniel knew exactly what that meant. “N-No, wait, please! I-I didn’t mean it!”
Dr. Kell smirked evilly and pressed another button. From out of miniscule holes in the stocks shot tiny lassos of wire, which aimed themselves precisely at Daniel’s toes. He winced anxiously as he felt them being pulled back to the stocks, so that his feet were almost completely immobile. Never in his life had he felt so helpless.
“Now, I’m still in a relatively good mood, and this is really your first offense, so I think fifteen minutes will suffice…”
The poor boy swallowed hard. “F-Fifteen minutes of w-what?”
Dr. Kell’s smirk turned into a malicious grin and she pressed a third button. From somewhere under the table emerged a pair of robotic tentacles—each tipped with a rotating scrub brush. The brushes buzzed to life, their high-pitched whirring sending thrills of terror down Daniel’s spine.
“No! Please! I-I’m sorry! Don’t tickle me with those, please!”
“Fifteen minutes starts… now.”
The instant she said “now,” the tentacles attacked. Daniel’s world was suddenly a maelstrom of ticklish agony as the brushes spun against the bottoms of his feet. He screamed with laughter and tried to curl his toes to lessen the feeling, but because of the wire pinning them back, he was utterly defenseless against the brushes’ onslaught of tickling.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOHOHohohohohohohoho!! Ahahahahahahahahaha, PLEHEHEHEHEHEASE!! Ahahahaha, make it STAHAHAHAHAP!! Ahahahahahaha Ihi’m behehehegging yooooou!!”
“Well, it’s nice to know that you’ve learned some manners,” mused Dr. Kell, as if pretending to consider. “But your fifteen minutes are far from up; on the contrary, it’s only been…” She glanced at her watch. “Forty seconds!”
Daniel would have groaned if he hadn’t been too busy laughing. The soft bristles were merciless against his tender soles, but even worse, their slow, methodical roaming brought them on occasion to his immobile toes, and when they did, Daniel’s laughter was rendered inaudible, save for his desperate gasps for breath.
Finally, just when stabs of pain in his chest were convincing him that he was about to die laughing, Dr. Kell looked at her watch and said, “Alright, time’s up.” She pressed another button and the brushes whirred to a stop and lifted from Daniel’s soles. The tentacles did not, however, retreat back into their hidden lair.
Dr. Kell approached Daniel’s head, her remote in hand. “Have we learned our lesson young man?” she asked, her thumb poised threateningly above the buttons on the remote, as though daring him to say something smart.
Daniel could hardly breathe, but when his eyes darted to the remote in her hand, he suddenly had the breath to speak. “Y-Yes! I’m s… I’m sorry! I w-won’t… do it again, I puh… promise!”
“Hmm… I’m not sure you’re really sorry, Danny. Maybe another fifteen minutes, just to be on the safe side…” Her thumb twitched the tiniest bit.
“NONONONONO!! Pleasedon’tticklemeanymore!” Daniel screamed, his eyes darting in a triangle between Dr. Kell, the remote, and the brush-tipped tentacles, still hovering over his defenseless soles. “I’ll be good, I swear! Just please no more tickling!”
To his surprise, Dr. Kell let loose with a musical peal of laughter. “Hahaha, it works! Excellent!”
“…W-What?” stammered Daniel, confused.
“That was my next experiment!” revealed Dr. Kell excitedly, still laughing as though Daniel had been the butt of a particularly amusing joke. “I wanted to see whether or not tickling could really be used as an effective punishment! I mean, I’ve heard that it can, but I wanted to confirm it; now I think it’s safe to say that it’s true—I totally broke you!”
Daniel stared at her, aghast. “Frigging seriously? That was an experiment? But… but how did you…?”
“How did I know you’d get mad and start getting short with me?” finished the doctor. “Why, I goaded you, of course! I knew you were getting annoyed with me, so I just delivered the right line to push you over the edge!”
Daniel wasn’t sure whether to be angry at being manipulated, afraid because he was still in the clutches of this insane woman, or admiring at her sheer evil genius.
“Now, I’m going to take a little break, and then you and I have one last game to play!” Dr. Kell pressed another button on her remote, and the extra restraints around his arms, body, and toes retracted back into the table. The stocks, however, remained, much to Daniel’s dismay.
“Um, w-what about me? Don’t I get a break too? You know, to get up and move around and stuff?”
“Oh no, dear!” responded the doctor. “If I let you go now, I’d have to sedate you again to get you back onto the table! But don’t worry, I won’t be leaving you on your own…” She clicked over to the wall speaker and pressed a button. “Darnell, dear, would you be so kind as to come and entertain our guest whilst I take a little break?”
An aggravated sigh came through the speaker, then: “Y-Yes, doctor. I’ll b-be there m-m-momentarily.”
“Good boy,” she said, then stepped away from the speaker, smiling at Daniel. “Never let it be said that I’m not an accommodating host.”
Daniel sighed. “Oh yes, you are most certainly that,” he mumbled sarcastically.
She narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by the hiss of the door as Donahue walked in. “H-Hullo again,” he said, smiling weakly at Daniel. “H-How are you h-holding up s-so far?”
“He’s doing just fine, Dalton,” said Dr. Kell dismissively. “Now just keep an eye on him, will you?” She left the room, leaving her assistant and Daniel to chat.
“It’s Donahue, dammit,” swore Donahue as soon as his employer had left. “Honestly, for someone so bright, you’d think she’d be able to get it right just once…”
“Hey, what happened to your stutter?” inquired Daniel curiously.
“It only manifests when I’m nervous,” explained Donahue. “Of course, Dr. Kell makes me very nervous, so as far as she knows, I’ve always got it…”
Daniel rolled his eyes. “Look dude, not that it’s any of my business, but how can you work for that woman? She’s a psycho! She kidnaps people to tickle them! And she obviously doesn’t appreciate you enough to get your name right!”
Donahue shrugged. “She’s not that bad a boss, really. You’d be amazed what you’ll put up with when you get paid as much as I do. And as for her being nuts, well, that’s not entirely her fault…”
“Oh?,” asked an intrigued Daniel, sensing incoming character development and ignoring the blatant breach in the fourth wall.
“Well, if the rumors are true, it all has to do with her parents,” began Donahue, dragging the chair out of the corner over to Daniel’s table, where he sat in it backwards, his arms resting on the back. “See, her folks were some kind of tickle freaks, right? And when Tara was a kid, they’d abuse her by tying her to her bed and tickle torturing the crap out of her.”
“Yeesh, really?” Daniel couldn’t help feeling a pang of pity for her—he was having a hard time getting through one day of tickle torture; he couldn’t imagine having to do it every day for his entire childhood.
“Oh yeah, it was brutal. And the worst part was, she couldn’t even tell anyone—tickling doesn’t leave any marks, and no-one really considers tickling to be abuse anyway, so she was stuck with it. Sometime around age fourteen, she decided she’d had enough. She started doing some research, studying the science behind tickling. Her original goal was to figure out a way to desensitize herself to it, so she’d never have to endure it again.”
“Did she succeed?” asked Daniel.
“Eh, sort of. Around age eighteen—ironically just when she was able to move out and be done with her freaky parents anyway—she finally developed this drug that makes you lose your ticklishness. You take it, and for twenty-four hours, you’re bulletproof. She takes it every morning, I’m pretty sure.”
“Huh. What I wouldn’t give for one of those pills…” muttered Daniel.
“The thing is, though,” continued Donahue, “All that tickling had made her a little, ah, funny, shall we say? She became obsessed with it—not just about finding ways to protect herself from tickling, but about finding new and creative ways to inflict it on others. It’s said that even throughout college, she experimented on her fellow students, developing her first devices and techniques. Then, when she finally graduated and got this lab, you wanna know what the first thing she did was?”
“W-What?” stammered Daniel, not sure he really wanted to know.
Donahue smiled dryly. “The first thing she did was, she lured her parents here on the pretext of showing them around her new lab, then knocked them out—and tickled them into insanity.”
“Oh Christ, really?” exclaimed Daniel, shocked.
“Uh-huh. Even today, they’re gibbering lunatics. That much we know is true—Kevin and Haylie Kell are both listed as inmates of the Saint Quagmire Mental Hospital.” Donahue smirked a little. “It’s said that they had to ban the doc from visiting them, because every time they’d look at her, they’d just burst into hysterical laughter.”
“Um, y-you don’t think she’ll do that to me, d-do you?” Daniel asked tremulously.
“I dunno, kid,” replied Donahue. “Impossible to tell with her. You never can predict what she’s gonna do. Most of her test subjects end up getting freed, but if she likes you enough, she may just decide to keep you…”
“K-Keep me??” Daniel squeaked. “You don’t mean, like… forever?”
“Oh no, not forever,” said Donahue in a reassuring tone. “But there was this one girl named Candy who she kept for a good… mm, five years? Maybe six…”
The very idea of being held captive that long, tickle tortured on a daily basis, made him want to scream. “D-Donahue, bro, y-you gotta get me out of here! Please, help me out! I’m begging you!”
Donahue started to look nervous, and his stutter returned in full force. “H-Help you escape? Um, I d-don’t know, Daniel. I m-mean, I w-wish I could, b-but Dr. Kell wouldn’t b-be very happy with m-me, especially w-with her f-f-favorite experiment up n-next…”
Daniel opened his mouth to plead further, but was cut off by the sight of Dr. Kell reentering the room. Donahue paled as she approached; he wasn’t kidding when he said she made him nervous.
“Well! I hope you boys had a nice little chat,” she said brightly. “Now you’d best run along now, Dugan, we have one more experiment to go…”
“Um, y-y-yes, doctor…” he stuttered, hurriedly getting up from his chair and scurrying towards the door. Daniel didn’t want him to go; he wished he’d had a chance to beg his case further, but it seemed hopeless now. Donahue flashed him one last apologetic look before the doors slammed shut behind him.
“Now then, Daniel, I hope you’re ready for this last one!” Dr. Kell said, grinning broadly. “I’m sure you’ll like it…”
Daniel scoffed. “Fat chance of that…” he muttered, his toes curling anxiously. This may have been the final experiment, but he knew that likely meant it would be the worst. And besides, if what Donahue had told him was true, and Dr. Kell decided to keep him… “What exactly is this last experiment, anyway?” he asked quickly, trying to distract himself from that train of thought.
“Well, to tell the truth, it’s not really so much an experiment; it’s really just my favorite part…” She gave a half-cheeky, half-sheepish smile and walked down to Daniel’s waiting bare feet. She crouched down by them so that her face was level with his soles.
Daniel wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t like this position at all. He sat up and tried to catch a glimpse of her face over his toes. “Um, what exactly are you doing?”
That’s when he felt something slippery and warm touch his left heel before crawling slowly up his sole, causing him to drop himself back onto the table and explode into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. “YAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHOHOHO GAHAHAD, WHAT IS THAHAHAHAHAT??!”
Dr. Kell had begun to gently, sensuously lick the soles of Daniel’s feet. She closed her eyes and listened to her toy scream. This really was her favorite part—as much as she loved using all her other methods, this was the part she anticipated with each new victim. She moaned happily as she savored the salty-sweet taste of Daniel’s bare soles, her tongue sliding across each tiny wrinkle and leaving a trail of saliva in its wake.
Daniel, meanwhile, was a hundred percent certain he was going to crawl out of his skin—whether from how horribly it tickled or how utterly gross it felt, he couldn’t be sure. He had felt this horrific sensation once before, when his dog had managed to get in a few licks on his feet when he was younger, but this was much worse by far.
“G-GAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! PLEHEHEHEHEHEASE, NO MOHOHOHOHORE!! AHAHAHAHAHA STAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAP!!”
Dr. Kell, however, was far too absorbed in carrying out her most personal of tortures to even tease Daniel. Still, his begging was cutting into her pleasure, so she decided to shut him up; she slid up and began to lick his toes.
Just as she had predicted, Daniel shrieked once and fell into silent laughter, banging on the table beneath him and uttering no more than the occasional gasp for breath as the doctor licked, nibbled and sucked on his wiggling digits. The last thing he felt before losing consciousness for the second time was a slippery tongue squirming between his toes.

 

[arachnid95]

When Daniel awoke, he thought for a moment that he was still locked in the stocks on the metal table in Dr. Kell’s lab. However, as he slowly regained consciousness, he found this was not the case. He was lying instead on a cot, inside what appeared to be some sort of cell with clear walls. He was still in his t-shirt and short, and his sandals were neatly placed at his bedside. All in all, the cell was fairly comfortable—but it was still a cell.
Daniel jumped as he heard footsteps coming toward him. He hastily shoved his bare feet into his sandals and strapped them a little tighter than usual, as though they would offer some protection in the event that the owner of those footsteps was Tara Kell.
Thankfully, the person who rounded the corner and stopped before Daniel’s cell was not Dr. Kell, but her assistant, Donahue.
“Oh thank god,” breathed Daniel, relieved. “What happened? Am I going to be let go?”
Donahue smiled sadly. “I’m afraid not, kid. After you passed out, she called a few security officers to come take you down here to the holding cells. It seems she loves you so much, she’s going to keep you as her personal tickle toy for a while.”
To say that Daniel’s heart sank would be an understatement—“plummeted” would be a more suitable word. “Oh god, no! She can’t do that! Please, I have to get out of here!”
“I’m sorry, bro,” said Donahue, his eyes filled with pity. “Hey, look at it this way. It’s really not that bad of a life; sure, she’ll tickle you silly every day for a few years, but at least you’ll get to live in comfort! And maybe you’ll get used to it; I think that one girl, Candy, actually learned to like it around year four…”
Daniel was too busy panicking to really be listening. “Donahue, bro, please! Y-You have to help me get out of here! I can’t take any more of this!”
“Look, Daniel, I really am sorry, but I…” The bookish assistant stopped in mid-sentence as more footsteps started to approach down the cell. “Crap, guards! I’m not supposed to be down here!”
Donahue turned and started to jog away. “H-Hey! Come back!” Daniel shouted after him, his face pressed up against the glass. “I don’t want to be tickled anymore!”
But Donahue had already vanished—just in time for four large, black-garbed men to come around the corner.
“Alright kid,” said one of them gruffly as he opened the door to Daniel’s cell. “Let’s go. Dr. Kell wants some more playtime with you.”
Daniel hurriedly backed up to the far wall like a cornered animal. “N-No! Please, don’t do this!”
The guard sighed. “Fine, kid. You wanna do this the hard way? Fine by me.” He turned to a pair of his associates and jerked his head towards Daniel. They nodded mutely and entered the cell, advancing on him.
Daniel braced himself to run. He knew he didn’t stand much of a chance—these guys looked like Olympians. But he had to try, remote though his chances were…

Dr. Kell was once again sitting in her monitor room, watching on the camera feeds as the guards headed towards Daniel’s cell. Her face was split by the biggest grin she’d worn in a long time. She had known that Daniel would be a great test subject, but she had had no idea that he’d make an even better tickle toy. She was already imagining the fun she was going to have with him—the fun new tools she’d use on him, the sadistic games she’d play with him. She wondered almost idly if he was ticklish anywhere besides his feet; she did prefer the feet as her target, but if he was ticklish in certain… other places, she would most certainly have to take full advantage of—
Suddenly the screens went dark, as did the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Her grin froze on her face as the room was plunged into darkness.
“…Computer, what’s going on?” she asked. Silence. “Computer?”

Daniel wasn’t sure why the lights had suddenly gone out, but he knew it was his chance. The guards were confused enough that he was able to duck through them without resistance, and he was already halfway down the hallway by the time he heard the angry voices and heavy footsteps of the guards behind him.
He rushed blindly through the corridors, taking every turn he came across in the hopes of shaking his pursuers. But in the back of his head, a tiny voice of reason told him that it was useless. He was only succeeding in getting himself hopelessly lost. Sooner or later the lights would come back on, and the cameras with them—and then he’d be screwed.
When he realized that the could no longer hear the guards behind him, he stopped in a short hallway to catch his breath—and that’s when he felt a hand grab him around the wrist. Another hand clapped over his mouth, stifling the scream of terror building in his throat.
“Shhh!!” hissed an urgent and familiar voice. “You’ve c-come too f-f-far to g-get caught now!”
The hands released him, and Daniel whirled around to face Donahue, relief filling his chest. “Thank the frigging lord!” he whispered hoarsely. “You’re helping me after all!”
“Of c-c-course,” came the stuttering reply. “I d-decided I c-couldn’t just l-l-leave you t-to…”
“Wow, you’re stuttering even worse than before! I thought only Dr. Kell could make you that nervous?”
“Y-Yeah, well…” Donahue looked around anxiously, fidgeting with his hands. “I’ve g-got reason to be n-n-nervous. She’s n-not gonna b-be happy when she f-finds out I c-cut the p-p-power…”
Daniel stared at him, wide-eyed. “You mean you… you’re the one who…?”
“Yeah, but n-never mind that n-now,” Donahue answered, grabbing Daniel’s wrist again. “C-Come on, we have to g-g-get you out of here…”

Up in her secluded monitor room, Dr. Kell’s mood had taken a turn for the worse. The woman who, minutes ago, was a bundle of sunshine and rainbows, was now a furiously broiling thunderstorm of rage.
She paced the dark room, barking into a battery-operated walkie-talkie. “What the HELL is going on?! I want answers, dammit!”
“We apologize, ma’am,” came the terrified voice of one of the facility’s engineers. “We’re not sure what exactly is wrong. None of the circuits seem broken, and the fuses are all still—“
“I don’t want to know what the problem isn’t,” hissed the doctor. “Just figure out what it is and fix it!”
“Well, um, that’s just it, doctor,” the engineer responded tremulously. “There doesn’t seem to be a problem at all. The only possible cause for it is if someone had shut the power off manually…”
“What?!” screamed Dr. Kell. “Who has access to the main power core??!”
“Well, um, the head engineer, and the computer… and your main lab assistant, what’s-his-name… Dane, or Dalvish, or something like that, isn’t it?”
It dawned on the doctor. She gritted her teeth and squeezed the walkie-talkie in her hand until the plastic casing cracked. “Donahue…”

“Y-You can d-d-drive, right?” asked Donahue as he led Daniel into the facility’s cavernous garage.
“Yeah, learned on a stick, even. Why?”
The pair reached a nondescript white van, one which Daniel recognized as being of the type his kidnappers had used. Donahue fumbled in his pockets for a moment before pulling out a key fob and handing it to Daniel.
“Here, t-take this v-van. Sh-Should have a f-f-full tank of g-gas.”
“Wait—what about you? Aren’t you coming with me?”
Donahue shook his head. “I h-have to s-s-stay here. Throw D-Doctor Kell off your s-s-scent.”
“Come on bro, just escape with me! You don’t have to work for that psycho anymore!” Daniel unlocked the passenger side door and held it open for Donahue, but he merely shook his head.
“L-Listen Daniel, the p-power could b-be on at any m-moment…”
As if on cue, the garage was suddenly flooded with light. A klaxon blared throughout the facility, warning of a security breach.
“Alright, D-Daniel, you d-d-don’t have m-much time. G-Get home and p-p-pack your s-stuff. Skip t-town. N-Nowhere is s-s-safe now, y-you understand?
Daniel nodded gravely. He jumped into the driver’s seat of the van and turned the key in the slot. As the engine roared to life, Donahue, sprinted to the back of the garage and hit the door-opener. As soon as the enormous door had lifted enough, the garage was filled with the sound of squealing tires and the odor of burned rubber as Daniel hit the gas and screamed out of the facility, the van becoming no more than a white speck in the distance.
“Good luck, kid,” whispered Donahue, before turning sharply about and hurrying back into the facility proper. He hurried through the halls of the facility, intent on covering his tracks while at the same time doing what he could to delay any further attempts to pursue Daniel. With any luck, he could get to one of the side-labs before too long, start working on one of the new weapons on Dr. Kell’s to-do list. Then he’d have an alibi. He tried to reassure himself as he walked that there was no way she could know, no way to pin him to Daniel’s escape…
“Where ever are you going, Donahue?” sounded the doctor’s voice behind him, making him jump nearly out of his skin. He whirled around to find her standing in the corridor behind him, smiling sweetly with her hands behind her back—and with a pair of her largest, burliest guards flanking her.
“D-Duh-Doctor!” he stammered, trying hard to stop his knees shaking. “I, um, I-I was j-j-just guh-going to, uh…”
“Going to explain to me, perhaps, why the power went out?” interrupted Dr. Kell. “And maybe, while you’re at it, why my new toy has now escaped in one of my vans?”
Donahue didn’t like the sound of her voice. It wasn’t angry, or even annoyed—but it was dangerous nonetheless. And he wasn’t sure he liked the fact that she had suddenly remembered his name. He tried to come up with some excuse, something that would appease her—but nothing came out.
His silence was as good as a confession to her. “You know, Donahue, I’ve started work on a new experiment, one which I think will interest you greatly.”
“Oh, um, r-r-really? And, uh, wuh-what m-might that b-be?” He started to back away slowly. Dr. Kell and her roided-out entourage stepped forward to match.
“Well, as it turns out, I think I have a solution for that nasty stutter of yours,” she said, her teeth bared in a shark-like grin. “A revolutionary new treatment that, if my hypothesis is correct, will take the whole world by storm! Just imagine it, thousands of vocally-impaired individuals like yourself, laughing their way to flawless, unimpeded speech!”
“Oh, ah, I’m g-g-glad to h-hear it!” said Donahue, continuing to back up until he hit a wall—a dead end. Dr. Kell stopped walking, but the two guards still advanced on the quaking man. “I, um, I-I suppose you’ll b-be n-n-needing a new t-test subject! I’ll guh-get s-searching right away…”
“Oh, but Donahue!” said Dr. Kell brightly, her grin turning into one of malice as the two guards reached the whimpering head assistant—or, shall we say, former head assistant—and grabbed him around the arms. “We already have one right here!”

Once Daniel was a mile away from the nightmarish facility, he allowed himself to breathe again. His feet still tingled with the memory of his tickle torture, and he felt a pang of guilt at the thought of leaving Donahue—the man who had risked everything to help him—at the mercy of that sadistic madwoman.
He started to turn onto the highway that would take him home, then stopped and pulled over. “Dammit…” he muttered, resting his head on the steering wheel. “I can’t just pack up and leave. Not while she’s still kidnapping people, tickling them into insanity…”
He waited a moment, thinking, then made up his mind. He wasn’t going home, not yet. No, he was heading for the press. The only way to make sure that no one else would fall under the control of Dr. Tara Kell was to bring her down, to expose her, to strip her of her assets and lock her away in some asylum, where she couldn’t get to anyone else. And he was going to do just that, if it was the last thing he did.
“Hang in there, Donahue buddy,” he said to himself as he started toward the offices of the Daily Quill, the biggest newspaper in the state. “Just hang in there. You and I’ll be having the last laugh, I can promise you that…”

 

[scottirish]

HOT! Thank you for sharing!

 

[arachnid95]

HOT! Thank you for sharing!

Heh, thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it! 😀

 

[skatergirl13371]

That was very good. I like how you let the protagonist escape in the end rather than the usual "he/she was tickled until they died", but also left room for a sequel. Poor Donahue.

Just one thing, you might want to consider putting spaces between each paragraph, to make it easier to read.

 

[arachnid95]

That was very good. I like how you let the protagonist escape in the end rather than the usual "he/she was tickled until they died", but also left room for a sequel. Poor Donahue.

Just one thing, you might want to consider putting spaces between each paragraph, to make it easier to read.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the story! And there certainly will be a sequel, although lord knows when I'll get around to writing it... XD

I appreciate the tip, too, by the way. I realize it probably is a little hard on the eyes; it looks nicer when it's in Word, and the paragraphs are actually indented, I promise... XP