Hi guys. This is my first shot at a tickling story. It features m/f nonconsensual tickling and a little bit of f/m at the end.
First published on DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/fedguy0/art/The-Art-Project-Part-1-mostly-m-f-tickling-1312467875
Disclaimer: The views expressed by characters in the story are solely for the purposes of the fetish scenario. The author does not hold or endorse discriminatory views towards women.
The silk scarves felt a little tighter than they should have.
Kate shifted on Emma's duvet, the soft cotton a pleasant counterpoint to the gentle abrasion of the bindings around her wrists and ankles. They were arranged in a loose spread-eagle, a symbolic restraint rather than a practical one. The whole point was artistic, after all. A visual metaphor. "The Chains That Bind," she'd called their project. A little on the nose, maybe, but powerful for their intended audience on campus.
"Almost perfect," Emma said, adjusting the angle of her phone propped on the dresser. The little red recording light blinked like a patient eye. "Just tilt your head a little more to the left. Yeah, like that. Look defiant. Like you're silently judging the patriarchy."
Kate rolled her eyes, but she complied, letting her expression settle into something she hoped read as 'stoic resistance' rather than 'mildly constipated'. "Am I judging it from my prone, helpless position on your floral bedspread? Because the message might be getting a little mixed."
"It's about the juxtaposition," Emma chirped, tidying up a stack of feminist theory textbooks from her nightstand. "The vulnerability and the strength. Trust me, it'll look great once I edit it. Maybe some dramatic black and white filtering."
"And you're sure you can get out of these?" Kate tested her left wrist, pulling against the scarf. The knot held fast, cinched tight against the bedpost. "Because this feels less like 'juxtaposition' and more like I need you to call a locksmith."
Emma laughed, a bright, careless sound. "Relax, they're just my dad's old scarves. We need it tight enough for the symbolism. Don't worry, I'll be right back. Just grabbing us some sandwiches from that deli you like. The one with the vegan tofu melt you're obsessed with."
"Emma, you can't just leave me here," Kate protested, a hint of real unease creeping into her voice.
"It was a huge hassle to get the view set up. You look great right now, I wanna keep this view when I come back. Don't worry! I won't be ten minutes! Fifteen, tops! It'll be fine. Keep the dramatic look going. Pretend you're pondering the weight of systemic oppression." Emma gave her a final, reassuring grin, snatched her keys from the desk, and skipped out of the room.
The front door clicked shut.
The silence that followed felt heavy. Kate lay there, listening to the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen downstairs, the distant drone of a lawnmower. She tried to slip her right wrist out of the knot. It didn't budge. She tried her left. Nothing.
Her stomach tightened. The knots hadn't just been retied; they'd been retied differently. More securely. Emma must have been distracted, her hands working on autopilot.
Okay. Deep breaths, Kate. It's fine. She'll be back soon. She closed her eyes, trying to reclaim the meditative headspace they'd been aiming for. Chains. Patriarchy. Systemic oppression. She could work with that. She was a woman in history, bound by societal expectations. A witch awaiting trial. A suffragette in a prison cell.
The floorboards in the hallway creaked.
Kate's eyes snapped open. "Emma? That you?" she called out, her voice a little too loud in the quiet room.
No answer.
The creaking came again, closer this time, stopping right outside her door. The handle turned, slow and deliberate. The door swung inward with a soft sigh, and a figure filled the frame, backlit by the hallway light. He was tall and gangly, a silhouette of unwashed hair and a hoodie that had seen better decades.
It was Mark, Emma's brother. The brother Emma only ever referred to with a weary sigh and a vague, "He's... going through some things."
Kate's unease crystallized into sharp, cold fear. He was just standing there, staring. Not at her face, but at the scarves, at the way they held her limbs to the bed. A slow, unsettling grin spread across his face, visible even in the dim light.
"Well, well," he said, his voice a low, greasy rumble. "What have we here?"
"What do you want?" Kate asked.
Mark gave a look that was somehow simultaneously contemptuous and lustful. It was here that Kate suddenly remembered what Emma had mentioned about him. Mark was an incel.
"Get out," Kate said, her voice stripping itself of all hesitation and filling with a brittle steel. "Now."
Mark didn't move. He took a step inside, the door swinging shut behind him and plunging the room into a deeper twilight, punctuated only by the blinking red light of Emma's phone. He was smirking, a smug, infuriating curve of his lips that made Kate's skin crawl.
"Get out of my sister's room? I don't think so," he said, his gaze sweeping over her exposed form. "But I will get you out of those 'chains of the patriarchy'. Or maybe I'll just add a few more."
He raised his own phone, its screen illuminating his pale, pimply face. He angled it, framing her on the bed, just like Emma had. The red recording light on his phone came on. Panic, hot and sharp, flared in Kate's chest.
"Turn that off. Turn it off right now, you creep." She thrashed against the scarves, a genuine struggle this time. The silk bit into her skin, a useless, frustrating restraint. "This is sexual harassment. I'm calling the police."
"With what? Your mind?" Mark chuckled, a wet, unpleasant sound. He walked closer, circling the bed like a shark. "No, I don't think you'll be doing that. See, I think you're going to be a little too busy for the next little while."
He stopped by her feet. Kate, who had been focused on his phone and his face, suddenly became acutely aware of how very vulnerable she was. Her socks were thin, her feet bare. Her legs were stretched taut, immobile.
"What do you want?" she bit out, hating the tremor in her voice.
"What do I want?" he mused, still recording. "I want to make a little video of my own. A counter-narrative, you might say. A public service announcement, starring the campus's most vocal man-hater."
He knelt at the foot of the bed. His free hand hovered over her sole. Kate flinched, her toes curling instinctively.
"I want you to admit you were wrong," he continued, his eyes glinting in the phone's light. "I want you to say that men are superior, that our natural leadership is what's best for society. I want you to thank us for building everything you take for granted. And you're going to say it with a smile."
"Go to hell," Kate spat. "You're disgusting."
"We'll see." Mark smiled. "Kate, when is the last time you've been tickled?"
Kate froze. Even in this situation the question had an air of absurdity. "What? What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"
Mark moved his fingers closer to her foot. Kate flinched on instinct. "Oh my. Oh this is going to be fun. Tell you what. Do what I want, or we'll find out how much of your body is really your choice."
Kate made a sound of sheer disbelief. "No. Stop being a creep."
Mark made his move.
He didn't grab or pinch. His fingers simply rested for a moment, then began to spider-walk delicately across the arch of her left foot.
Kate sucked in a sharp breath, a jolt of pure, unexpected sensation shooting up her leg. It wasn't pain. It was something far more chaotic. A ticklish shock. Her brain stuttered, trying to process. He was tickling her? This was his grand torture? The sheer absurdity of it almost made her laugh, but it was the sensations that did.
"Stohop," she gasped, a giggle bubbling up and strangling the word. Her foot jerked, but the scarf held it fast. "What the f-fuck are you d-dohohohing?"
"Getting the truth out of you," he said calmly, his fingers now scribbling with more purpose. He switched to her right foot, tracing the sensitive skin just below her toes. "Just tell me I'm right, and this can all stop."
"Never," she managed, the word wobbling as a fresh wave of giggles erupted. Her body was betraying her, twisting and contorting in a frantic, useless dance. "You're... you're insahahahane!"
He dug in, using both hands now, skittering nails across the soles of her feet.
The laughter became a high-pitched shriek, completely involuntary. It was a violation, a hijacking of her own body. Tears of mirth and frustration pricked at the corners of her eyes.
"A little admission for the camera, Kate?" Mark's voice was a oily monotone against the backdrop of her hysterics. "Just a few simple words. 'Men are the natural leaders.'"
"Nohohoho!" she wailed, her head thrashing against the pillow. Her mind was screaming, a litany of feminist theory and righteous fury, but all that came out was this... this noise. This helpless, hiccupping laughter. She tried to clamp her mouth shut, to bite her lip, but her body was no longer hers to command.
"Fine then," he said. "Let's try a different approach."
His hands left her feet, and for a blissful second, Kate could breathe. She sucked in ragged, shuddering gasps, her body slick with a light sweat. She glared at him, her vision blurred, her defiance a hot coal in her chest. "That all you got, you... you pathetic little..."
Her taunt died as he moved. He didn't go for her feet again. He straddled the end of the bed, leaning forward until he could reach her knees.
"Let's see if we can find a more persuasive argument," he murmured.
His fingers dug into the soft, sensitive flesh behind her knees, a spot she hadn't even considered an erogenous zone or a vulnerability. It was pure electrical fire. A strangled squeak escaped her throat. The laughter that erupted was different this time—deeper, more desperate, less a giggle and more a full-body convulsion.
"No, no, NOHOHO NOT THEHEHERE! STAHAHAHAP!" she shrieked, bucking her hips in a futile attempt to dislodge him. The bedframe groaned with the force of her struggles. Her calves cramped. Her abs burned from the strain.
"Let's try something," he murmured, his fingers merciless. "Say, 'I was wrong about the wage gap.'"
"NEHEHEHEVER!" she howled, the word torn apart by spasms of laughter. "IT'S... IT'S REHEHEHEAL! YOU'RE... YOU'RE AN IDIHOHOT!"
He shifted his grip, one hand tormenting the back of one knee while the other scribbled against her hip. "What about this one? 'Women are naturally happier in supportive, domestic roles.'"
"GO TO HEHEHELL! GO TO... HAHAHAHA... FUCK YOURSELF, YOU MISOGYNIHIHIHISTIC PIHIHIHIG!"
The insults were getting harder to form, the syllables dissolving into helpless chortles. Mark was watching her, a rapt, clinical expression on his face. In that moment he was more than creep. He was a scientist, and she was his specimen. He was testing hypotheses, prodding for weaknesses, cataloging her every reaction.
Her mind raced, trying to find a way out. There was none. Her body was a prisoner to the sensations, a traitor to its own will. She tried to detach, to float above it, to remember her speeches, her arguments, her convictions. But every flick of his fingers brought her crashing back down into the writhing, laughing, pathetic reality of the bed.
"P-Please..." she managed to gasp out during a brief pause as he shifted position. "Please... stop... I can't... I can't breathe..."
"Begging already?" he smirked, resuming his assault on her hips, wiggling his fingers into the hollows there. "Good. But you're begging for the wrong thing. You should be begging for the chance to tell the truth. Just say, 'I love men. They know what's best for me.'"
That was it. That was the line that broke through. Not the tickling, but the words. The sheer, grotesque parody of submission he was demanding. A new wave of fury, hot and pure, flooded her system, momentarily overriding the tingling agony. "NO! NEVER! You... you absolute... HAHAHAHA... FUCKING... D-DON'T... AHAHAHAHA!"
The words were shattered, but the sentiment was there. And he saw it.
His smirk faded, replaced by a look of intense, focused displeasure. "Fine. Have it your way."
He released her hips and moved again, this time crawling further up the bed until he was kneeling beside her torso. Kate's eyes widened in genuine terror. She knew what was coming. Her stomach was already clenching in anticipation, her muscles tensing as if they could somehow form a shield.
He placed a single, pointed finger right in the center of her belly.
The initial touch was nothing. A brief moment of respite. Then, he began to draw slow, deliberate circles.
"O-Oh god..." Kate whimpered. "No... no, not there..." The sensation was different. It wasn't the sharp, frantic shock of her feet or the deep, muscular seizure of her knees. This was a slow, creeping dread. A gathering storm. Every circle brought the storm closer, the tension building to an unbearable pitch.
"Are you ready to admit your ideology is a sham?" he asked, circling a little faster.
"S-Shut... shut up..." she breathed, her abs tightening like a drawn bowstring. "You... you c-can't... dohohohis..."
Her laughter started as a low chuckle, a rumble deep in her chest. It quickly escalated, bubbling up past her lips as a continuous stream of helpless giggles. She tried to fight it, to hold it in, but the pressure was immense. It was like trying to stop a volcano with a cork.
"Come on, Kate. A simple, 'I was a silly girl.'"
"I... ahahaha... I'm... nohohohot... a... sihihihilly... gihihihihirl!" she squeaked, the last word dissolving into a peal of pure hysterics. Her back arched off the bed, her body trying to escape the source of the torment by simply ceasing to exist in that space.
"I disagree," Mark said, his tone flat and conversational. He added a second finger, then a third, scribbling wildly across her stomach. The storm broke.
A high-pitched, frantic scream of laughter tore from her throat. There was no defiance left, only reaction. Pure, animalistic reaction. Her thoughts were gone, her convictions scattered like leaves in a hurricane. All that existed was the maddening, relentless dance of those fingers on her skin.
"Please! Please! I CAHAHAHAN'T! STAHAHAHAP!" she shrieked, tears now streaming freely down her face, tracing hot paths through her makeup. She wasn't crying from sadness; she was crying from overload, from the complete and utter annihilation of her self-control.
"It's a simple request," Mark said calmly, never ceasing his assault. He brought one hand up to her ribs, wiggling into the spaces between them. "Just say, 'The patriarchy is a myth invented by unhappy women.'"
Kate's body jackknifed, a silent scream of laughter catching in her throat. It was too much. The combination, the location, it was a checkmate. Her mind went blank, a white-hot screen of static. The fight was over. She just wanted it to stop. She would have said anything. She would have sold her soul for a single second of stillness.
"Yehes! Yes! IHIHI'LL SAY IHIT!" she babbled, the words a mess of sobs and laughter. "Juhust... stohop! Pleeheeheease! The pahahatriarchy... ihihihit's... a myhith!"
"Say it properly," Mark ordered, his fingers pausing for a single, glorious second. "Look at the camera. No giggling."
Kate took a shuddering, gasping breath, trying to regain a sliver of composure. Her face was a mess of tears and snot and humiliation. She turned her head, her blurred vision finding the two red recording lights. Emma's and Mark's. Two eyes watching her fall.
"The... The patriarchy," she started, her voice a trembling, wet whisper, "is a... a myth..."
"Invented by..." he prompted, his fingers hovering over her stomach, a silent threat.
"In-invented by... unhappy women," she choked out, the last words tasting like poison in her mouth.
"Good girl," Mark said, a note of genuine satisfaction in his voice. He finally, finally, took his hands off her.
Kate collapsed against the bed, a boneless, quivering heap. The relief was so overwhelming it was almost painful. She lay there, panting, her chest heaving, every muscle in her body screaming in protest. She felt hollowed out, scraped clean. A void where her anger and certainty used to be.
Mark shifted off the bed, pacing around the room with her phone now. He replayed the recording, the tinny sound of her own hysterical laughter filling the space. It was grotesque. It was her, and it wasn't her.
"Now for the next part," he said, not looking at her. "The positive message."
Kate squeezed her eyes shut. "No," she whispered, the word a fragile puff of air. "No more. I can't. You got what you wanted."
"Oh, I got a confession," he corrected, turning to face her. "That's the 'tear-down' phase. Now we need the 'build-up'. A message of hope. Of proper understanding." He knelt by the bed again, his expression unreadable. "We're going to talk about your place. The natural, happy place of a woman."
"I have a place," she rasped, forcing her eyes open. "It's wherever the fuck I want it to be." The defiance was a ghost of its former self, a faint echo, but it was there.
Mark sighed dramatically, as if her stubbornness was a personal inconvenience. "We're back to this, are we?" His gaze dropped to her exposed midriff. "I was hoping we could do this the easy way. I have other things to do today."
He reached out, but not for her stomach. He trailed a single finger along her lowest rib, a light, almost teasing touch. Kate flinched, a strangled gasp escaping her lips. Her entire body tensed, anticipating the onslaught.
"Let's try again," he said calmly, his finger beginning to trace a line from her hip bone up towards her armpit. "Say, 'A woman finds true fulfillment in serving a strong man.'"
"Go... hah... go to hell," she panted, trying to twist away from the slow, torturous path of his finger. The anticipation was almost worse than the touch itself.
His finger reached the hollow of her armpit, pausing there. "Fulfillment, Kate. That's what you're missing. All this anger... it's just a void. You can fill it with purpose."
"Purpose... is... not... being a... dohohohominated... ahahah... ah!" The laughter erupted as he wiggled all five fingers into the sensitive hollow. It was sharp, electric, and utterly crippling. Her arm pulled uselessly against the scarf, her entire side seizing up.
"Domesticated," he corrected her, his fingers scribbling with relentless energy. "It's a beautiful word. It implies order, structure, care. Things you clearly lack. Now say it. 'I crave domestication.'"
"Nohohoho! Ihit's... dihihigraceful!" she wailed, her body bucking. The laughter was high and thin, stripped of any real mirth. It was the sound of a system failure, a body short-circuiting.
"So is that screaming," he noted blandly, pulling back from her armpit but moving immediately to her other side. He danced his fingers along her waistline, just above the waistband of her shorts. The skin there was softer, more sensitive. Her giggles returned, breathy and desperate.
"I'll... hah... I'll kill you," she gasped out between fits. "I'll... f-find a way... you... ahahahah... you... son of a bitch!"
"Threats won't work," he said, pinching her side gently, which sent another jolt through her. "They just prove my point. All this aggression... so unfeminine. You need an outlet. A constructive one."
"Please... please, nohoho more," she begged, the words coming out in wet, hiccupping sobs. Her laughter was constant now, a ragged, percussive beat against the mattress springs.
"Almost there," Mark said, a note of encouragement in his voice that was somehow more terrifying than anger. He returned to her belly, but this time he didn't scribble. He used a single, stiff index finger to poke, repeatedly, right at her navel. Poke. Poke. Poke. Each one was a small, sharp detonation of sensation.
"Stop! Stop! STAHAHAHAP! IHIHI'LL DO IHIT! IHI'LL DO AHAHANYTHING!" she shrieked, her voice cracking.
"What's the magic phrase, Kate?" he asked, the relentless poking continuing.
"DOHOMESTICATION! CRUHUAHVE IT! PLEHEHEHEASE!" The words were a torrent, a jumbled mess of pure capitulation. She would have signed over her soul, her degree, her entire future, just for him to stop that one, maddening finger.
He stopped.
The silence was deafening. Kate went limp, her body still twitching with phantom sensations.
"Good," Mark said, a look of profound satisfaction on his face. He looked at the video on his phone, a proud creator admiring his art. "Very good. The emotional arc is really coming through. The raw desperation... it's powerful."
He stood up and began to pace, narrating to himself. "Okay, so next... we have the confession, the breakdown, and the reprogramming. We need a closing statement. Something for the masses?"
Kate was disgusted by the statement. She had already surrended before and said the vile things Mark wanted. But it was not true surrender. It was coercion and she knew it. Things she didn't believe, still don't believe, forced out of her by torture. There must still be a way to end this with some dignity.
She took a shaky breath, not for show, but to try and center herself. She tuned out the pounding in her chest, the ache in her muscles, the lingering phantom tingles on her skin. She focused her entire being on the sounds beyond the room. She listened out for the chances of Emma returning. She said she would be back quickly. Kate hoped she was right.
"Just... give me a second," she pleaded, her voice cracking. "To... to find the right words."
"Take your time," Mark said magnanimously, turning to face her. He raised the phone again, the red light an accusatory eye. "Art can't be rushed." He was gloating, savoring his power.
"I have... I have an idea," Kate said, her mind racing. "You clearly believe this stuff strongly. Have you got a statement or manifesto I can read?"
"For the video?" Mark asked, intrigued.
"To show... to show I've really learned," she said, pouring every ounce of her remaining acting ability into the role of the broken, reformed feminist. "I could read from it. It would... it would show I've accepted the true order of things. It would be more convincing. More... sincere." She looked up at him, her expression a perfect mask of newfound devotion.
A flicker of pride crossed Mark's face. He liked that. He liked that she wanted to learn from his text. "Brilliant," he breathed, completely buying it. "That's perfect."
He put his phone down on the dresser and disappeared into the hallway, returning a moment later with the scrappy notebook. He leaned over her, opening it to a dog-eared page. "Here. Start with this paragraph. 'The inherent weakness of the female psyche...'"
Kate took a deep, steadying breath as he held the book above her face. She looked at the words, at the hateful, ridiculous screed. And she began to read.
"'The inherent weakness of the female psyche is not a flaw, but a feature, designed by nature to elicit protection and guidance from the superior male,'" she recited, her voice flat, dead. Then, she paused, and looked him dead in the eye.
"...is the rambling of a scared little boy who can't get a date," she finished, her voice ringing with a sudden, shocking clarity.
The change was instantaneous. The triumph on Mark's face evaporated, replaced by a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. He didn't say a word. He threw the book onto the floor with a thud, lunged forward, and his hands descended like talons.
They went for her worst, most vulnerable spot of all. His fingers shot into her armpits, both at once, and dug in with a fury that was nothing like the clinical exploration of before. This was punishment.
The sound that came out of Kate's throat wasn't a laugh. It was a raw, strangled scream. "NOHOHO YOU FUHUHUHUCKING—!" The word was lost in an avalanche of sensation. This wasn't a giggle, it was an electrical current of pure agony. Her entire body went rigid, then jackknifed off the bed so hard she was sure she heard something in her back pop. Her vision swam, the room a blur of beige ceiling and Mark's furious, contorted face.
"You want to play games?" he snarled, his face inches from hers, spittle flying from his lips. He was no longer a cool, detached tormentor; he was a thwarted, angry child, and she was his toy he was about to break. His fingers clawed deeper, raking against the hypersensitive skin.
"STAHAHAHAP! STAHAHAHAP! I'M SOHOHOREE! I'M SOHOHOREE!" she shrieked, the words torn from her lungs.
"You better be sorry. I want to hear you read it without that snotty little attitude, and without injecting your bullshit," he growled, but he did stop. His fingers retreated, leaving a phantom burning sensation. Kate gasped for air, her body a live wire of aftershocks. The room swam back into focus. And from outside, beyond the drone of the lawnmower that had now fallen silent, she heard it.
A car door. Definitely a car door this time, followed by the familiar crunch of tires on the gravel driveway.
Emma. It had to be Emma. Relief and a new, sharper terror warred within her. Kate didn't know if Mark was planning to hurt Emma as well when she came back. She needed to keep him occupied, and give Emma a fighting chance. If she stalled him, if she kept his attention on her, Emma would come up the stairs and see the door shut, hear the sounds. This could end.
Her decision was made in a heartbeat. It wasn't about ideology anymore. It was about survival.
"You want to hear me read it?" Kate's voice was a wrecked croak, but she managed to infuse it with a sliver of the old fire, a ghost of the defiant activist she had been an hour ago. "Fine. Let's analyze it, shall we? 'The inherent weakness of the female psyche...' Oh, this is a classic. Compensatory writing. Author clearly feels 'inherently weak' himself and is projecting his inadequacy onto an entire gender. See, Mark, this is what we call sublimation."
Mark's face, which had been cooling into a smug triumph, froze. He stared at her, his brain struggling to catch up to the shift. She wasn't supposed to be analyzing. She was supposed to be broken.
"What... what are you doing?" he stammered.
"Reading. Using my brain. You should try it sometime," she continued, pushing through the pain in her throat. "And the prose! 'Elicit protection and guidance.' It's so clunky. It's like he was trying to sound academic but only had a thesaurus and a grudge." She took another ragged breath, her eyes locked on his, daring him to make a move. The front door opened downstairs. A faint click. Emma. Keep him here.
"It's... it's not about prose!" he sputtered, the anger returning, hot and fast. "It's about the truth!"
"The truth?" Kate let out a short, sharp, humorless laugh. "The truth is that you, the sad little man who wrote this doorstop, are terrified of women. Terrified that without some imaginary 'natural order,' you have nothing. No claim to power, no justification for your mediocrity. You're not a dominant male, Mark. You're a parasite feeding on a system that's failing. And that's why you need to tie up women to make them say your lines. Because on your own, you've got nothing."
She saw it in his eyes. The flicker of insecurity she'd identified in the book was writ large on his face. Her words were landing, and they were hitting a nerve. A big one. That was when she heard the footsteps on the stairs. Light, quick. Emma's.
"Shut up!" he roared, all pretense of control gone. "Just SHUT UP!"
His hands flew back to her, not with the targeted fury of before, but with a wild, unfocused rage. He was lashing out. His fingers dug into her sides, her ribs, her stomach, all at once. A chaotic storm of sensation. The laughter was torn from her in agonized bursts, but through it, she held onto one thought: He's not thinking. He's not listening. He's just reacting.
"AHAHAHA! NO! OH MY GOD! NO!" she shrieked, this time with genuine panic. Yet underneath, she held out just a sliver of hope.
The bedroom door quietly unlocked, but Mark didn't notice. Emma stood in the doorway, her face a mask of cold, focused fury. In her hand, she held a small, black device that Kate recognized with a jolt of disbelief. A taser.
"Get. Off. Her." Emma's voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a shard of ice.
Mark froze, his hands still on Kate's torso. He turned, his face slack with shock. Emma didn't hesitate. She lunged forward, and the taser made a sickening crackling sound as it connected with Mark's shoulder. He let out a choked yelp and collapsed onto the floor beside the bed, his body twitching.
The world went silent.
Kate lay there, trembling, her breath coming in ragged sobs. Emma immediately moved to her wrists, her fingers working at the knots with a practiced urgency. "I'm so sorry, Kate. I'm so, so sorry," she whispered, her own voice thick with unshed tears. The scarves fell away.
Kate pulled her arms in, curling into a fetal position. The feeling of being able to move, to protect herself, was overwhelming. Emma moved to her ankles, freeing them too.
"What... what is that?" Kate finally managed to ask, looking at the taser Emma had placed carefully on the nightstand.
"My brother is a creep," Emma said, her jaw tight. "I've been carrying this for two years. I just never thought I actually had to use it on him. I just... I never thought he'd do something like this. Not to you."
"We need to call the police. Now," Emma said, her hand hovering over her phone. Her face was pale, a mixture of shock and a dawning, protective rage.
Kate sat up slowly, her entire body feeling like one giant bruise. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. The shakes were subsiding, replaced by a slow, cold clarity that settled in her bones. She looked at Mark's unconscious form on the floor, then at Emma's phone.
"No," Kate said, her voice quiet but firm.
"No? Kate, he assaulted you! He recorded it! We have him!"
"I know." Kate's gaze drifted to Mark's discarded phone on the dresser, its screen dark. "But the police... they'll take the phones. They'll file it away. He might a slap on the wrist, or maybe a couple years in jail, surrounded by more angry men. He won't learn."
Emma stared at her, bewildered. "What are you talking about? What other choice is there?"
Kate's eyes met hers, and in them, Emma saw something shift. The trauma was still there, raw and fresh, but it was being consumed by something else. A cold, hard fire.
"He was torturing me with tickling. It was awful, but it...worked." Kate looked away briefly, shameful. "He really messed up my head. Made me say awful things just to get it to stop."
"So now we turn the tables."
An hour later, Mark began to stir. A low groan escaped his lips as he woke, the world swimming back into focus. His head throbbed where it had hit the floor. He tried to sit up, but found he couldn't. His arms and legs were stretched taut, anchored firmly to the four corners of Emma's bed.
The scarves. They were wrapped around him now, tight and unyielding, reinforced with even more materials to account for his greater strength. The roles were reversed.
He panicked, pulling against the bindings, but the knots were complex, and brutally efficient.
A figure moved into his line of sight. It was Kate. She was somewhat recovered now, her hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. She held Emma's taser in one hand, not pointing it at him, just letting it rest against her thigh, and in another a water bottle.
"Morning, sunshine," she said, her voice devoid of any emotion. "Or afternoon, I guess. Time gets a little fuzzy after you've been tased."
Mark's eyes darted around, looking for Emma. She was leaning against the dresser, arms crossed, her expression like carved granite.
"What... what is this?" he stammered, a pathetic note of whining in his voice. "Let me go! This is kidnapping!"
"This is education," Kate corrected him. She twisted the cap off the water bottle and took a slow drink. "You wanted to make a video. A public service announcement. So do we. But you got the premise all wrong. It's not about the weakness of the female psyche. It's about the fragility of your ego. I'm not a man-hater like you said, but I have a big problem with men like you."
She placed the bottle on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed, just out of reach of his thrashing legs. She looked down at him, her gaze clinical.
"You wanted to know what I was thinking, when your hands were on me?" she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "At first, I was thinking about you. About how pathetic you are. About how this was the only way you could feel powerful. But then... something interesting happened."
"I stopped thinking about you," Kate continued, her eyes holding a strange, analytical light. "And I started thinking about the sensation itself. I admit, you broke me. It's was like a complete override of the central nervous system. A system crash. Your brain gets so flooded with this one, overwhelming signal that everything else—thought, speech, ideology..."
Kate briefly looked away, and resumed, quieter. "...dignity. All gone. I would have said anything to get you to stop."
She resumed here gaze, and leaned in closer, her face just inches from his. Mark flinched, turning his head away. The smugness, the cruelty, it was all gone, replaced by a raw, twitching fear. "And I realized," she said softly, "that you've weaponized vulnerability. You found a way to bypass a person's defenses, to humiliate them into submission."
"But, how would you have known the effectiveness of such an unorthodox method?" Kate paused, letting the words settle. "I think you knew, because you're very ticklish yourself."
Mark's eyes widened in dawning horror.
"You used a tool for evil. But any tool can be used for good. Now that I know how it felt... now that I've experienced it... it's time to use it for what it should be. A tool for reeducation."
Mark's bravado faded. "No. You wouldn't. You can't.
"Can't I?" Kate's lips twisted into a smile that held no warmth.
Her fingers hovered over his exposed side, over the thin material of his t-shirt. "You see, Mark, you wanted to understand the female experience. You wanted me to learn my place. I think it's only fair if you learn a little something about vulnerability yourself. About being completely, helplessly at the mercy of someone else."
Mark began to struggle in earnest, thrashing against the scarves, the bed frame groaning under the strain. "Emma! Emma, stop her! This is crazy!"
Emma didn't move. She just watched, her arms still crossed, her expression unreadable.
Kate ignored him. Her fingers, which had been hovering, made contact. She didn't start with the frantic scribbling he'd used on her. She began with a slow, deliberate exploration. A single fingertip tracing the line of his lowest rib, just as he had done to her.
Mark sucked in a sharp breath, a choked sound of surprise and indignation. "D-Don't... get your fucking hands off me!" He tried to sound angry, authoritative, but it came out as a wheezing squeak.
"Doesn't feel so good when the shoe's on the other foot, does it?" Kate murmured, continuing the slow, maddening trace. She watched his face, cataloging every twitch, every flinch. "You were so interested in my reaction. Now I'm interested in yours. Tell me, what are you thinking right now? Are you contemplating the weakness of the your incel psyche?"
"Fuck you," he spat, trying to jerk away from her touch.
"That's not very constructive," Kate tsked. She added a second finger, spider-walking them up towards his armpit. He was wearing a t-shirt, but the thin cotton did little to dull the sensation.
A strangled gasp escaped him. His body tensed, a frantic, jerky motion. "S-Stop... I'm warning you..."
"You're warning me?" Kate let out a short, sharp laugh. "From the position of absolute helplessness? From the vantage point of the bed you tied me to an hour ago? I'm terrified."
Her fingers dipped into the hollow of his armpit, a light, testing touch.
"Nohoho..." The word was out before he could stop it, a strangled, involuntary sound. His eyes widened in horror, as if he'd betrayed himself. He'd made that noise. That helpless, feminine noise.
"Oh," Kate said, a flicker of genuine, predatory delight in her eyes.
She leaned closer, her breath warm against his ear. "That's the sound I was looking for," she whispered. "The sound of understanding." And then, with a final, triumphant smile, she brought all five fingers to bear. The high-pitched, undignified shriek that erupted from Mark's throat was a symphony of pure, unadulterated terror, and for the first time since the ordeal began, a real, genuine smile touched Kate's lips. The education was just beginning.
First published on DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/fedguy0/art/The-Art-Project-Part-1-mostly-m-f-tickling-1312467875
Disclaimer: The views expressed by characters in the story are solely for the purposes of the fetish scenario. The author does not hold or endorse discriminatory views towards women.
The silk scarves felt a little tighter than they should have.
Kate shifted on Emma's duvet, the soft cotton a pleasant counterpoint to the gentle abrasion of the bindings around her wrists and ankles. They were arranged in a loose spread-eagle, a symbolic restraint rather than a practical one. The whole point was artistic, after all. A visual metaphor. "The Chains That Bind," she'd called their project. A little on the nose, maybe, but powerful for their intended audience on campus.
"Almost perfect," Emma said, adjusting the angle of her phone propped on the dresser. The little red recording light blinked like a patient eye. "Just tilt your head a little more to the left. Yeah, like that. Look defiant. Like you're silently judging the patriarchy."
Kate rolled her eyes, but she complied, letting her expression settle into something she hoped read as 'stoic resistance' rather than 'mildly constipated'. "Am I judging it from my prone, helpless position on your floral bedspread? Because the message might be getting a little mixed."
"It's about the juxtaposition," Emma chirped, tidying up a stack of feminist theory textbooks from her nightstand. "The vulnerability and the strength. Trust me, it'll look great once I edit it. Maybe some dramatic black and white filtering."
"And you're sure you can get out of these?" Kate tested her left wrist, pulling against the scarf. The knot held fast, cinched tight against the bedpost. "Because this feels less like 'juxtaposition' and more like I need you to call a locksmith."
Emma laughed, a bright, careless sound. "Relax, they're just my dad's old scarves. We need it tight enough for the symbolism. Don't worry, I'll be right back. Just grabbing us some sandwiches from that deli you like. The one with the vegan tofu melt you're obsessed with."
"Emma, you can't just leave me here," Kate protested, a hint of real unease creeping into her voice.
"It was a huge hassle to get the view set up. You look great right now, I wanna keep this view when I come back. Don't worry! I won't be ten minutes! Fifteen, tops! It'll be fine. Keep the dramatic look going. Pretend you're pondering the weight of systemic oppression." Emma gave her a final, reassuring grin, snatched her keys from the desk, and skipped out of the room.
The front door clicked shut.
The silence that followed felt heavy. Kate lay there, listening to the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen downstairs, the distant drone of a lawnmower. She tried to slip her right wrist out of the knot. It didn't budge. She tried her left. Nothing.
Her stomach tightened. The knots hadn't just been retied; they'd been retied differently. More securely. Emma must have been distracted, her hands working on autopilot.
Okay. Deep breaths, Kate. It's fine. She'll be back soon. She closed her eyes, trying to reclaim the meditative headspace they'd been aiming for. Chains. Patriarchy. Systemic oppression. She could work with that. She was a woman in history, bound by societal expectations. A witch awaiting trial. A suffragette in a prison cell.
The floorboards in the hallway creaked.
Kate's eyes snapped open. "Emma? That you?" she called out, her voice a little too loud in the quiet room.
No answer.
The creaking came again, closer this time, stopping right outside her door. The handle turned, slow and deliberate. The door swung inward with a soft sigh, and a figure filled the frame, backlit by the hallway light. He was tall and gangly, a silhouette of unwashed hair and a hoodie that had seen better decades.
It was Mark, Emma's brother. The brother Emma only ever referred to with a weary sigh and a vague, "He's... going through some things."
Kate's unease crystallized into sharp, cold fear. He was just standing there, staring. Not at her face, but at the scarves, at the way they held her limbs to the bed. A slow, unsettling grin spread across his face, visible even in the dim light.
"Well, well," he said, his voice a low, greasy rumble. "What have we here?"
"What do you want?" Kate asked.
Mark gave a look that was somehow simultaneously contemptuous and lustful. It was here that Kate suddenly remembered what Emma had mentioned about him. Mark was an incel.
"Get out," Kate said, her voice stripping itself of all hesitation and filling with a brittle steel. "Now."
Mark didn't move. He took a step inside, the door swinging shut behind him and plunging the room into a deeper twilight, punctuated only by the blinking red light of Emma's phone. He was smirking, a smug, infuriating curve of his lips that made Kate's skin crawl.
"Get out of my sister's room? I don't think so," he said, his gaze sweeping over her exposed form. "But I will get you out of those 'chains of the patriarchy'. Or maybe I'll just add a few more."
He raised his own phone, its screen illuminating his pale, pimply face. He angled it, framing her on the bed, just like Emma had. The red recording light on his phone came on. Panic, hot and sharp, flared in Kate's chest.
"Turn that off. Turn it off right now, you creep." She thrashed against the scarves, a genuine struggle this time. The silk bit into her skin, a useless, frustrating restraint. "This is sexual harassment. I'm calling the police."
"With what? Your mind?" Mark chuckled, a wet, unpleasant sound. He walked closer, circling the bed like a shark. "No, I don't think you'll be doing that. See, I think you're going to be a little too busy for the next little while."
He stopped by her feet. Kate, who had been focused on his phone and his face, suddenly became acutely aware of how very vulnerable she was. Her socks were thin, her feet bare. Her legs were stretched taut, immobile.
"What do you want?" she bit out, hating the tremor in her voice.
"What do I want?" he mused, still recording. "I want to make a little video of my own. A counter-narrative, you might say. A public service announcement, starring the campus's most vocal man-hater."
He knelt at the foot of the bed. His free hand hovered over her sole. Kate flinched, her toes curling instinctively.
"I want you to admit you were wrong," he continued, his eyes glinting in the phone's light. "I want you to say that men are superior, that our natural leadership is what's best for society. I want you to thank us for building everything you take for granted. And you're going to say it with a smile."
"Go to hell," Kate spat. "You're disgusting."
"We'll see." Mark smiled. "Kate, when is the last time you've been tickled?"
Kate froze. Even in this situation the question had an air of absurdity. "What? What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"
Mark moved his fingers closer to her foot. Kate flinched on instinct. "Oh my. Oh this is going to be fun. Tell you what. Do what I want, or we'll find out how much of your body is really your choice."
Kate made a sound of sheer disbelief. "No. Stop being a creep."
Mark made his move.
He didn't grab or pinch. His fingers simply rested for a moment, then began to spider-walk delicately across the arch of her left foot.
Kate sucked in a sharp breath, a jolt of pure, unexpected sensation shooting up her leg. It wasn't pain. It was something far more chaotic. A ticklish shock. Her brain stuttered, trying to process. He was tickling her? This was his grand torture? The sheer absurdity of it almost made her laugh, but it was the sensations that did.
"Stohop," she gasped, a giggle bubbling up and strangling the word. Her foot jerked, but the scarf held it fast. "What the f-fuck are you d-dohohohing?"
"Getting the truth out of you," he said calmly, his fingers now scribbling with more purpose. He switched to her right foot, tracing the sensitive skin just below her toes. "Just tell me I'm right, and this can all stop."
"Never," she managed, the word wobbling as a fresh wave of giggles erupted. Her body was betraying her, twisting and contorting in a frantic, useless dance. "You're... you're insahahahane!"
He dug in, using both hands now, skittering nails across the soles of her feet.
The laughter became a high-pitched shriek, completely involuntary. It was a violation, a hijacking of her own body. Tears of mirth and frustration pricked at the corners of her eyes.
"A little admission for the camera, Kate?" Mark's voice was a oily monotone against the backdrop of her hysterics. "Just a few simple words. 'Men are the natural leaders.'"
"Nohohoho!" she wailed, her head thrashing against the pillow. Her mind was screaming, a litany of feminist theory and righteous fury, but all that came out was this... this noise. This helpless, hiccupping laughter. She tried to clamp her mouth shut, to bite her lip, but her body was no longer hers to command.
"Fine then," he said. "Let's try a different approach."
His hands left her feet, and for a blissful second, Kate could breathe. She sucked in ragged, shuddering gasps, her body slick with a light sweat. She glared at him, her vision blurred, her defiance a hot coal in her chest. "That all you got, you... you pathetic little..."
Her taunt died as he moved. He didn't go for her feet again. He straddled the end of the bed, leaning forward until he could reach her knees.
"Let's see if we can find a more persuasive argument," he murmured.
His fingers dug into the soft, sensitive flesh behind her knees, a spot she hadn't even considered an erogenous zone or a vulnerability. It was pure electrical fire. A strangled squeak escaped her throat. The laughter that erupted was different this time—deeper, more desperate, less a giggle and more a full-body convulsion.
"No, no, NOHOHO NOT THEHEHERE! STAHAHAHAP!" she shrieked, bucking her hips in a futile attempt to dislodge him. The bedframe groaned with the force of her struggles. Her calves cramped. Her abs burned from the strain.
"Let's try something," he murmured, his fingers merciless. "Say, 'I was wrong about the wage gap.'"
"NEHEHEHEVER!" she howled, the word torn apart by spasms of laughter. "IT'S... IT'S REHEHEHEAL! YOU'RE... YOU'RE AN IDIHOHOT!"
He shifted his grip, one hand tormenting the back of one knee while the other scribbled against her hip. "What about this one? 'Women are naturally happier in supportive, domestic roles.'"
"GO TO HEHEHELL! GO TO... HAHAHAHA... FUCK YOURSELF, YOU MISOGYNIHIHIHISTIC PIHIHIHIG!"
The insults were getting harder to form, the syllables dissolving into helpless chortles. Mark was watching her, a rapt, clinical expression on his face. In that moment he was more than creep. He was a scientist, and she was his specimen. He was testing hypotheses, prodding for weaknesses, cataloging her every reaction.
Her mind raced, trying to find a way out. There was none. Her body was a prisoner to the sensations, a traitor to its own will. She tried to detach, to float above it, to remember her speeches, her arguments, her convictions. But every flick of his fingers brought her crashing back down into the writhing, laughing, pathetic reality of the bed.
"P-Please..." she managed to gasp out during a brief pause as he shifted position. "Please... stop... I can't... I can't breathe..."
"Begging already?" he smirked, resuming his assault on her hips, wiggling his fingers into the hollows there. "Good. But you're begging for the wrong thing. You should be begging for the chance to tell the truth. Just say, 'I love men. They know what's best for me.'"
That was it. That was the line that broke through. Not the tickling, but the words. The sheer, grotesque parody of submission he was demanding. A new wave of fury, hot and pure, flooded her system, momentarily overriding the tingling agony. "NO! NEVER! You... you absolute... HAHAHAHA... FUCKING... D-DON'T... AHAHAHAHA!"
The words were shattered, but the sentiment was there. And he saw it.
His smirk faded, replaced by a look of intense, focused displeasure. "Fine. Have it your way."
He released her hips and moved again, this time crawling further up the bed until he was kneeling beside her torso. Kate's eyes widened in genuine terror. She knew what was coming. Her stomach was already clenching in anticipation, her muscles tensing as if they could somehow form a shield.
He placed a single, pointed finger right in the center of her belly.
The initial touch was nothing. A brief moment of respite. Then, he began to draw slow, deliberate circles.
"O-Oh god..." Kate whimpered. "No... no, not there..." The sensation was different. It wasn't the sharp, frantic shock of her feet or the deep, muscular seizure of her knees. This was a slow, creeping dread. A gathering storm. Every circle brought the storm closer, the tension building to an unbearable pitch.
"Are you ready to admit your ideology is a sham?" he asked, circling a little faster.
"S-Shut... shut up..." she breathed, her abs tightening like a drawn bowstring. "You... you c-can't... dohohohis..."
Her laughter started as a low chuckle, a rumble deep in her chest. It quickly escalated, bubbling up past her lips as a continuous stream of helpless giggles. She tried to fight it, to hold it in, but the pressure was immense. It was like trying to stop a volcano with a cork.
"Come on, Kate. A simple, 'I was a silly girl.'"
"I... ahahaha... I'm... nohohohot... a... sihihihilly... gihihihihirl!" she squeaked, the last word dissolving into a peal of pure hysterics. Her back arched off the bed, her body trying to escape the source of the torment by simply ceasing to exist in that space.
"I disagree," Mark said, his tone flat and conversational. He added a second finger, then a third, scribbling wildly across her stomach. The storm broke.
A high-pitched, frantic scream of laughter tore from her throat. There was no defiance left, only reaction. Pure, animalistic reaction. Her thoughts were gone, her convictions scattered like leaves in a hurricane. All that existed was the maddening, relentless dance of those fingers on her skin.
"Please! Please! I CAHAHAHAN'T! STAHAHAHAP!" she shrieked, tears now streaming freely down her face, tracing hot paths through her makeup. She wasn't crying from sadness; she was crying from overload, from the complete and utter annihilation of her self-control.
"It's a simple request," Mark said calmly, never ceasing his assault. He brought one hand up to her ribs, wiggling into the spaces between them. "Just say, 'The patriarchy is a myth invented by unhappy women.'"
Kate's body jackknifed, a silent scream of laughter catching in her throat. It was too much. The combination, the location, it was a checkmate. Her mind went blank, a white-hot screen of static. The fight was over. She just wanted it to stop. She would have said anything. She would have sold her soul for a single second of stillness.
"Yehes! Yes! IHIHI'LL SAY IHIT!" she babbled, the words a mess of sobs and laughter. "Juhust... stohop! Pleeheeheease! The pahahatriarchy... ihihihit's... a myhith!"
"Say it properly," Mark ordered, his fingers pausing for a single, glorious second. "Look at the camera. No giggling."
Kate took a shuddering, gasping breath, trying to regain a sliver of composure. Her face was a mess of tears and snot and humiliation. She turned her head, her blurred vision finding the two red recording lights. Emma's and Mark's. Two eyes watching her fall.
"The... The patriarchy," she started, her voice a trembling, wet whisper, "is a... a myth..."
"Invented by..." he prompted, his fingers hovering over her stomach, a silent threat.
"In-invented by... unhappy women," she choked out, the last words tasting like poison in her mouth.
"Good girl," Mark said, a note of genuine satisfaction in his voice. He finally, finally, took his hands off her.
Kate collapsed against the bed, a boneless, quivering heap. The relief was so overwhelming it was almost painful. She lay there, panting, her chest heaving, every muscle in her body screaming in protest. She felt hollowed out, scraped clean. A void where her anger and certainty used to be.
Mark shifted off the bed, pacing around the room with her phone now. He replayed the recording, the tinny sound of her own hysterical laughter filling the space. It was grotesque. It was her, and it wasn't her.
"Now for the next part," he said, not looking at her. "The positive message."
Kate squeezed her eyes shut. "No," she whispered, the word a fragile puff of air. "No more. I can't. You got what you wanted."
"Oh, I got a confession," he corrected, turning to face her. "That's the 'tear-down' phase. Now we need the 'build-up'. A message of hope. Of proper understanding." He knelt by the bed again, his expression unreadable. "We're going to talk about your place. The natural, happy place of a woman."
"I have a place," she rasped, forcing her eyes open. "It's wherever the fuck I want it to be." The defiance was a ghost of its former self, a faint echo, but it was there.
Mark sighed dramatically, as if her stubbornness was a personal inconvenience. "We're back to this, are we?" His gaze dropped to her exposed midriff. "I was hoping we could do this the easy way. I have other things to do today."
He reached out, but not for her stomach. He trailed a single finger along her lowest rib, a light, almost teasing touch. Kate flinched, a strangled gasp escaping her lips. Her entire body tensed, anticipating the onslaught.
"Let's try again," he said calmly, his finger beginning to trace a line from her hip bone up towards her armpit. "Say, 'A woman finds true fulfillment in serving a strong man.'"
"Go... hah... go to hell," she panted, trying to twist away from the slow, torturous path of his finger. The anticipation was almost worse than the touch itself.
His finger reached the hollow of her armpit, pausing there. "Fulfillment, Kate. That's what you're missing. All this anger... it's just a void. You can fill it with purpose."
"Purpose... is... not... being a... dohohohominated... ahahah... ah!" The laughter erupted as he wiggled all five fingers into the sensitive hollow. It was sharp, electric, and utterly crippling. Her arm pulled uselessly against the scarf, her entire side seizing up.
"Domesticated," he corrected her, his fingers scribbling with relentless energy. "It's a beautiful word. It implies order, structure, care. Things you clearly lack. Now say it. 'I crave domestication.'"
"Nohohoho! Ihit's... dihihigraceful!" she wailed, her body bucking. The laughter was high and thin, stripped of any real mirth. It was the sound of a system failure, a body short-circuiting.
"So is that screaming," he noted blandly, pulling back from her armpit but moving immediately to her other side. He danced his fingers along her waistline, just above the waistband of her shorts. The skin there was softer, more sensitive. Her giggles returned, breathy and desperate.
"I'll... hah... I'll kill you," she gasped out between fits. "I'll... f-find a way... you... ahahahah... you... son of a bitch!"
"Threats won't work," he said, pinching her side gently, which sent another jolt through her. "They just prove my point. All this aggression... so unfeminine. You need an outlet. A constructive one."
"Please... please, nohoho more," she begged, the words coming out in wet, hiccupping sobs. Her laughter was constant now, a ragged, percussive beat against the mattress springs.
"Almost there," Mark said, a note of encouragement in his voice that was somehow more terrifying than anger. He returned to her belly, but this time he didn't scribble. He used a single, stiff index finger to poke, repeatedly, right at her navel. Poke. Poke. Poke. Each one was a small, sharp detonation of sensation.
"Stop! Stop! STAHAHAHAP! IHIHI'LL DO IHIT! IHI'LL DO AHAHANYTHING!" she shrieked, her voice cracking.
"What's the magic phrase, Kate?" he asked, the relentless poking continuing.
"DOHOMESTICATION! CRUHUAHVE IT! PLEHEHEHEASE!" The words were a torrent, a jumbled mess of pure capitulation. She would have signed over her soul, her degree, her entire future, just for him to stop that one, maddening finger.
He stopped.
The silence was deafening. Kate went limp, her body still twitching with phantom sensations.
"Good," Mark said, a look of profound satisfaction on his face. He looked at the video on his phone, a proud creator admiring his art. "Very good. The emotional arc is really coming through. The raw desperation... it's powerful."
He stood up and began to pace, narrating to himself. "Okay, so next... we have the confession, the breakdown, and the reprogramming. We need a closing statement. Something for the masses?"
Kate was disgusted by the statement. She had already surrended before and said the vile things Mark wanted. But it was not true surrender. It was coercion and she knew it. Things she didn't believe, still don't believe, forced out of her by torture. There must still be a way to end this with some dignity.
She took a shaky breath, not for show, but to try and center herself. She tuned out the pounding in her chest, the ache in her muscles, the lingering phantom tingles on her skin. She focused her entire being on the sounds beyond the room. She listened out for the chances of Emma returning. She said she would be back quickly. Kate hoped she was right.
"Just... give me a second," she pleaded, her voice cracking. "To... to find the right words."
"Take your time," Mark said magnanimously, turning to face her. He raised the phone again, the red light an accusatory eye. "Art can't be rushed." He was gloating, savoring his power.
"I have... I have an idea," Kate said, her mind racing. "You clearly believe this stuff strongly. Have you got a statement or manifesto I can read?"
"For the video?" Mark asked, intrigued.
"To show... to show I've really learned," she said, pouring every ounce of her remaining acting ability into the role of the broken, reformed feminist. "I could read from it. It would... it would show I've accepted the true order of things. It would be more convincing. More... sincere." She looked up at him, her expression a perfect mask of newfound devotion.
A flicker of pride crossed Mark's face. He liked that. He liked that she wanted to learn from his text. "Brilliant," he breathed, completely buying it. "That's perfect."
He put his phone down on the dresser and disappeared into the hallway, returning a moment later with the scrappy notebook. He leaned over her, opening it to a dog-eared page. "Here. Start with this paragraph. 'The inherent weakness of the female psyche...'"
Kate took a deep, steadying breath as he held the book above her face. She looked at the words, at the hateful, ridiculous screed. And she began to read.
"'The inherent weakness of the female psyche is not a flaw, but a feature, designed by nature to elicit protection and guidance from the superior male,'" she recited, her voice flat, dead. Then, she paused, and looked him dead in the eye.
"...is the rambling of a scared little boy who can't get a date," she finished, her voice ringing with a sudden, shocking clarity.
The change was instantaneous. The triumph on Mark's face evaporated, replaced by a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. He didn't say a word. He threw the book onto the floor with a thud, lunged forward, and his hands descended like talons.
They went for her worst, most vulnerable spot of all. His fingers shot into her armpits, both at once, and dug in with a fury that was nothing like the clinical exploration of before. This was punishment.
The sound that came out of Kate's throat wasn't a laugh. It was a raw, strangled scream. "NOHOHO YOU FUHUHUHUCKING—!" The word was lost in an avalanche of sensation. This wasn't a giggle, it was an electrical current of pure agony. Her entire body went rigid, then jackknifed off the bed so hard she was sure she heard something in her back pop. Her vision swam, the room a blur of beige ceiling and Mark's furious, contorted face.
"You want to play games?" he snarled, his face inches from hers, spittle flying from his lips. He was no longer a cool, detached tormentor; he was a thwarted, angry child, and she was his toy he was about to break. His fingers clawed deeper, raking against the hypersensitive skin.
"STAHAHAHAP! STAHAHAHAP! I'M SOHOHOREE! I'M SOHOHOREE!" she shrieked, the words torn from her lungs.
"You better be sorry. I want to hear you read it without that snotty little attitude, and without injecting your bullshit," he growled, but he did stop. His fingers retreated, leaving a phantom burning sensation. Kate gasped for air, her body a live wire of aftershocks. The room swam back into focus. And from outside, beyond the drone of the lawnmower that had now fallen silent, she heard it.
A car door. Definitely a car door this time, followed by the familiar crunch of tires on the gravel driveway.
Emma. It had to be Emma. Relief and a new, sharper terror warred within her. Kate didn't know if Mark was planning to hurt Emma as well when she came back. She needed to keep him occupied, and give Emma a fighting chance. If she stalled him, if she kept his attention on her, Emma would come up the stairs and see the door shut, hear the sounds. This could end.
Her decision was made in a heartbeat. It wasn't about ideology anymore. It was about survival.
"You want to hear me read it?" Kate's voice was a wrecked croak, but she managed to infuse it with a sliver of the old fire, a ghost of the defiant activist she had been an hour ago. "Fine. Let's analyze it, shall we? 'The inherent weakness of the female psyche...' Oh, this is a classic. Compensatory writing. Author clearly feels 'inherently weak' himself and is projecting his inadequacy onto an entire gender. See, Mark, this is what we call sublimation."
Mark's face, which had been cooling into a smug triumph, froze. He stared at her, his brain struggling to catch up to the shift. She wasn't supposed to be analyzing. She was supposed to be broken.
"What... what are you doing?" he stammered.
"Reading. Using my brain. You should try it sometime," she continued, pushing through the pain in her throat. "And the prose! 'Elicit protection and guidance.' It's so clunky. It's like he was trying to sound academic but only had a thesaurus and a grudge." She took another ragged breath, her eyes locked on his, daring him to make a move. The front door opened downstairs. A faint click. Emma. Keep him here.
"It's... it's not about prose!" he sputtered, the anger returning, hot and fast. "It's about the truth!"
"The truth?" Kate let out a short, sharp, humorless laugh. "The truth is that you, the sad little man who wrote this doorstop, are terrified of women. Terrified that without some imaginary 'natural order,' you have nothing. No claim to power, no justification for your mediocrity. You're not a dominant male, Mark. You're a parasite feeding on a system that's failing. And that's why you need to tie up women to make them say your lines. Because on your own, you've got nothing."
She saw it in his eyes. The flicker of insecurity she'd identified in the book was writ large on his face. Her words were landing, and they were hitting a nerve. A big one. That was when she heard the footsteps on the stairs. Light, quick. Emma's.
"Shut up!" he roared, all pretense of control gone. "Just SHUT UP!"
His hands flew back to her, not with the targeted fury of before, but with a wild, unfocused rage. He was lashing out. His fingers dug into her sides, her ribs, her stomach, all at once. A chaotic storm of sensation. The laughter was torn from her in agonized bursts, but through it, she held onto one thought: He's not thinking. He's not listening. He's just reacting.
"AHAHAHA! NO! OH MY GOD! NO!" she shrieked, this time with genuine panic. Yet underneath, she held out just a sliver of hope.
The bedroom door quietly unlocked, but Mark didn't notice. Emma stood in the doorway, her face a mask of cold, focused fury. In her hand, she held a small, black device that Kate recognized with a jolt of disbelief. A taser.
"Get. Off. Her." Emma's voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a shard of ice.
Mark froze, his hands still on Kate's torso. He turned, his face slack with shock. Emma didn't hesitate. She lunged forward, and the taser made a sickening crackling sound as it connected with Mark's shoulder. He let out a choked yelp and collapsed onto the floor beside the bed, his body twitching.
The world went silent.
Kate lay there, trembling, her breath coming in ragged sobs. Emma immediately moved to her wrists, her fingers working at the knots with a practiced urgency. "I'm so sorry, Kate. I'm so, so sorry," she whispered, her own voice thick with unshed tears. The scarves fell away.
Kate pulled her arms in, curling into a fetal position. The feeling of being able to move, to protect herself, was overwhelming. Emma moved to her ankles, freeing them too.
"What... what is that?" Kate finally managed to ask, looking at the taser Emma had placed carefully on the nightstand.
"My brother is a creep," Emma said, her jaw tight. "I've been carrying this for two years. I just never thought I actually had to use it on him. I just... I never thought he'd do something like this. Not to you."
"We need to call the police. Now," Emma said, her hand hovering over her phone. Her face was pale, a mixture of shock and a dawning, protective rage.
Kate sat up slowly, her entire body feeling like one giant bruise. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. The shakes were subsiding, replaced by a slow, cold clarity that settled in her bones. She looked at Mark's unconscious form on the floor, then at Emma's phone.
"No," Kate said, her voice quiet but firm.
"No? Kate, he assaulted you! He recorded it! We have him!"
"I know." Kate's gaze drifted to Mark's discarded phone on the dresser, its screen dark. "But the police... they'll take the phones. They'll file it away. He might a slap on the wrist, or maybe a couple years in jail, surrounded by more angry men. He won't learn."
Emma stared at her, bewildered. "What are you talking about? What other choice is there?"
Kate's eyes met hers, and in them, Emma saw something shift. The trauma was still there, raw and fresh, but it was being consumed by something else. A cold, hard fire.
"He was torturing me with tickling. It was awful, but it...worked." Kate looked away briefly, shameful. "He really messed up my head. Made me say awful things just to get it to stop."
"So now we turn the tables."
An hour later, Mark began to stir. A low groan escaped his lips as he woke, the world swimming back into focus. His head throbbed where it had hit the floor. He tried to sit up, but found he couldn't. His arms and legs were stretched taut, anchored firmly to the four corners of Emma's bed.
The scarves. They were wrapped around him now, tight and unyielding, reinforced with even more materials to account for his greater strength. The roles were reversed.
He panicked, pulling against the bindings, but the knots were complex, and brutally efficient.
A figure moved into his line of sight. It was Kate. She was somewhat recovered now, her hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. She held Emma's taser in one hand, not pointing it at him, just letting it rest against her thigh, and in another a water bottle.
"Morning, sunshine," she said, her voice devoid of any emotion. "Or afternoon, I guess. Time gets a little fuzzy after you've been tased."
Mark's eyes darted around, looking for Emma. She was leaning against the dresser, arms crossed, her expression like carved granite.
"What... what is this?" he stammered, a pathetic note of whining in his voice. "Let me go! This is kidnapping!"
"This is education," Kate corrected him. She twisted the cap off the water bottle and took a slow drink. "You wanted to make a video. A public service announcement. So do we. But you got the premise all wrong. It's not about the weakness of the female psyche. It's about the fragility of your ego. I'm not a man-hater like you said, but I have a big problem with men like you."
She placed the bottle on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed, just out of reach of his thrashing legs. She looked down at him, her gaze clinical.
"You wanted to know what I was thinking, when your hands were on me?" she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "At first, I was thinking about you. About how pathetic you are. About how this was the only way you could feel powerful. But then... something interesting happened."
"I stopped thinking about you," Kate continued, her eyes holding a strange, analytical light. "And I started thinking about the sensation itself. I admit, you broke me. It's was like a complete override of the central nervous system. A system crash. Your brain gets so flooded with this one, overwhelming signal that everything else—thought, speech, ideology..."
Kate briefly looked away, and resumed, quieter. "...dignity. All gone. I would have said anything to get you to stop."
She resumed here gaze, and leaned in closer, her face just inches from his. Mark flinched, turning his head away. The smugness, the cruelty, it was all gone, replaced by a raw, twitching fear. "And I realized," she said softly, "that you've weaponized vulnerability. You found a way to bypass a person's defenses, to humiliate them into submission."
"But, how would you have known the effectiveness of such an unorthodox method?" Kate paused, letting the words settle. "I think you knew, because you're very ticklish yourself."
Mark's eyes widened in dawning horror.
"You used a tool for evil. But any tool can be used for good. Now that I know how it felt... now that I've experienced it... it's time to use it for what it should be. A tool for reeducation."
Mark's bravado faded. "No. You wouldn't. You can't.
"Can't I?" Kate's lips twisted into a smile that held no warmth.
Her fingers hovered over his exposed side, over the thin material of his t-shirt. "You see, Mark, you wanted to understand the female experience. You wanted me to learn my place. I think it's only fair if you learn a little something about vulnerability yourself. About being completely, helplessly at the mercy of someone else."
Mark began to struggle in earnest, thrashing against the scarves, the bed frame groaning under the strain. "Emma! Emma, stop her! This is crazy!"
Emma didn't move. She just watched, her arms still crossed, her expression unreadable.
Kate ignored him. Her fingers, which had been hovering, made contact. She didn't start with the frantic scribbling he'd used on her. She began with a slow, deliberate exploration. A single fingertip tracing the line of his lowest rib, just as he had done to her.
Mark sucked in a sharp breath, a choked sound of surprise and indignation. "D-Don't... get your fucking hands off me!" He tried to sound angry, authoritative, but it came out as a wheezing squeak.
"Doesn't feel so good when the shoe's on the other foot, does it?" Kate murmured, continuing the slow, maddening trace. She watched his face, cataloging every twitch, every flinch. "You were so interested in my reaction. Now I'm interested in yours. Tell me, what are you thinking right now? Are you contemplating the weakness of the your incel psyche?"
"Fuck you," he spat, trying to jerk away from her touch.
"That's not very constructive," Kate tsked. She added a second finger, spider-walking them up towards his armpit. He was wearing a t-shirt, but the thin cotton did little to dull the sensation.
A strangled gasp escaped him. His body tensed, a frantic, jerky motion. "S-Stop... I'm warning you..."
"You're warning me?" Kate let out a short, sharp laugh. "From the position of absolute helplessness? From the vantage point of the bed you tied me to an hour ago? I'm terrified."
Her fingers dipped into the hollow of his armpit, a light, testing touch.
"Nohoho..." The word was out before he could stop it, a strangled, involuntary sound. His eyes widened in horror, as if he'd betrayed himself. He'd made that noise. That helpless, feminine noise.
"Oh," Kate said, a flicker of genuine, predatory delight in her eyes.
She leaned closer, her breath warm against his ear. "That's the sound I was looking for," she whispered. "The sound of understanding." And then, with a final, triumphant smile, she brought all five fingers to bear. The high-pitched, undignified shriek that erupted from Mark's throat was a symphony of pure, unadulterated terror, and for the first time since the ordeal began, a real, genuine smile touched Kate's lips. The education was just beginning.
