This is my first post and first story. Sorry for the cheesy username.
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Edgerton calculated it must have been only two days since his capture. Naked, wet, and exhausted from hunger and thirst, he accompanied two of his captors from the isolation tank to whatever awaited him next. He had no idea how many hours he had spent in the tank; the prolonged deprivation of his senses made him long for any sensation, but even the dank smell, the dim light, and the sound of his captors' footsteps were presently overwhelming his psyche.
He was given a large canteen and a voice from a loudspeaker told him to drink. He assumed it was poisoned or drugged, but his vital instincts took over, and like an animal he eagerly quenched his thirst. His thoughts had begun to welcome death, and poison no longer seemed the threat it would have 24 hours ago. He was made to lie stomach-up on a long, smooth table, just wide enough to support his entire frame. As his sense of sight returned he could make out what appeared to be tiny holes on the ceiling, in a rectangular pattern roughly the size and shape of the table; he could also see his nameless, voiceless abductors standing there with their guns. I could just jump up and run about, and they would shoot me... it would be over quick, he thought. His mind was coming back fast – there must have been a stimulant in the water he drank – and he tried to put all thoughts of death out of his mind. He was sure he would be rescued soon, if only he could hold out and endure whatever torture they had in store for him.
The voice told him to stretch his arms straight out over his head, and he complied. So it's to be bondage, then, he thought, and images of whips, canes, knuckles, and torturous flaying tools dashed through his mind one by one in an instant. He lay there for a moment as his masters quickly left the room. His sense of touch was coming back and presently he had intense itches on his nose, cheeks, buttocks. He had but to think of a part of his body and his mind would somehow provide the requisite itching sensation. He did not dare move, though. A sudden, pleasant hum surrounded him and enveloped his fragile ears, and a light fog descended from the walls.
“Do not panic,” said the voice in a cloying, sickly sweet tone. “The fog is not poisonous; it is merely to show you the size of your cage.” As the fog approached, a grid of lasers materialized slowly on all sides, none of them more than two or three inches from his body. Hence the holes on the ceiling, he reasoned. He could feel his heart jump when small compartments all around the table opened and sleek, robotic arms snaked their way over seemingly every itchy spot on his body. The voice told him, “here are the rules. Those mechanical arms – we like to call them 'effectors' – are very fragile. A man of your strength could easily break them.”
At this moment an image of Draper, his longtime friend and partner, appeared in projection on the ceiling. Draper was was bound tightly to a rack, and his body appeared to be covered with electrodes. So they got you too, thought Edgerton. The voice continued, “The effectors will start lightly and begin to merely tickle you. However, if any of the lasers around you is breached, the implements on the end of each effector will get incrementally sharper and will apply more pressure, and they will thereby slowly shred your skin.
“In addition, each time you touch a laser, we will send a progressively more painful shock through your partner here. The table you are lying on can sense your weight. If you remove yourself from the table, or if any of the effectors is broken, your partner will die a slow, painful death by electrocution, and you will be made to listen to his cries. There are sensors under you which will detect urination; any urine you spill will cause the effectors to send a shock through you with each touch.”
Edgerton could see Draper's eyes in the projection. They evinced a feeling of urgent dread simultaneous with an air of understanding and even forgiveness. Draper's eyes seemed to be saying, we are in this together... do what you have to do... I will see you on the other side. I wonder if he can see me, Edgerton thought.
“One last thing before we begin,” the voice said; “your room is equipped with a sound pressure level meter. If you utter so much as a peep, it will have the same effect as if you had touched a laser.” At this, the room went dark, and he was left staring into the frightened eyes of Draper. So it is bondage of the worst kind, he thought: I must remain bound and gagged by my own will. His mind told him he would be able to end this at any time; his loyalty to Draper told him otherwise.
The little arms by his feet began their cold, mechanical movement. Paradoxically-soft steel with a myriad of textures on his starved, bare soles sent pangs of intense tickling through his spine. His brain worked full force to inhibit his inherent reflexes which traveled back from his spine to his legs. A burgeoning consciousness flooded his mind, and he became hyper-aware of the rhythmic semi-unison of the pulse in his torso and in his extremities. A gentle circulation of air kept his skin dry and receptive. My God, his brain told him, the ticklish fire in my feet. His brain flashed images of fast-moving snails in grass and visions of Christ gliding effortlessly over the water, in severe juxtaposition to Draper's concentrated brow. His toes began subtle machinations of their own.
Breathing joined in counter-rhythm to his heartbeat as the lifeless steel near his shorn armpits gained vitality. He felt his will slip momentarily in a twitch of his outstretched arms. His mind saw forty feminine fingers gently forcing him into maniacal submission, their soft pads and nails amusing themselves in wicked delight. His body tried to roll over to escape as his whole ticklish torso was brought rudely from deprivation to sensory deluge. His fingers began to undulate as though he were playing an instrument, and his palms longed for at least a metal bar to hold on to. He lay nearly motionless and silent as the machine performed its mean business, tickling him on his soles and upper torso.
Time blurs in sensory overload as it did in the deprivation tank. Had he spent mere seconds or a half hour on this torturous table? The silent humming and monochrome vision of Draper on the ceiling intensified his sense of touch, while the stimulant from the water he drank was bringing him to the most heightened self awareness he had ever felt. After a long-short moment his belly was now aflame, as the effectors began traversing his ribs and abdomen, coming too-near his crotch. His mind watched as fifty reticent maidens thoughtlessly danced their rounds, trampling the hills and valleys of his homeland, to their north two perky peaks, and to their south a vehement volcano. Some of his slick foot-snails had escaped to his knees and thighs.
His brain yearned for his body to thrash around, and tried to persuade his mind with images of carp on the deck of a boat and that kid who fell off of the swings in third grade. He wished he could simply escape into unconsciousness but the stimulant would have none of it. The twisted robots were programmed to start and stop in unison, like fire ants, in pseudo-random patterns only a computer could predict. A crowd in his mind chanted: no escape without death no escape without death.
As the arms continued to tickle him, he could feel a lion roar trapped in his larynx, ready to escape. His mind was singing to him, a drunken clown leading a chorus of kindergarten tots with a rusty pennywhistle in a banal nursery rhyme – tickle tickle to and fro, not too fast not too slow. The lion in his throat tried to join in. He was conscious of each touch as he imagined a disembodied nervous system lying on the table. An effector swooped in to glance his hip, and he watched as light traveled from the nerve, through the spine, and up to the brain. No nerve seemed exempt. Tickle tickle to and fro... He lay there like that, as tickling and pain started to lose their identity as discrete sensations.
The stimulant apparently took double action as a diuretic, and as the tickling went on he could feel the tickle-pain of his bladder becoming prolific with the water he had just drunk. His mind turned to images of an old lemonade fountain, the smell of the ocean, the feeling of moist towels on his hands. He did not dare let it out, but he worried he might lose control. Oh the delight and anguish of consciousness, remarked the clown between a verse and the refrain.
Minutes passed. The random starting and stopping of his robot torture did not allow his body or brain to become accustomed or desensitized; it was as though each touch was the first. He began to wish for real straps or ropes or anything to exert against. He closed his eyes, and the negative of Draper burned in his retina slowly transformed into the nasty creatures of ancient mythology. He was ravaged by the many-headed hydra and the three moist tongues of mighty cerberos. Several stone-cold gorgons arose from the ground and snakes slithered from their heads to curl about his limbs. Harpies descended, and demons and devils blew in from the four corners of the earth to torment him with feathers and forks. Jesus doesn't love kids who pee their pants.
Pupils in closed eyes drilled holes in eyelids, and he opened them to see an image of Draper writhing in agony. Had he slipped? He noticed in horror that his erect penis had tripped one of the lasers. The maidens on the hill prayed for the volcano to erupt and danced a bit harder than before. The demons began to tickle more ferociously, and his turgid penis stood upright as a monument to pain and desire. Inhibit, he told himself. Think: my name is will edgerton i live in new york my father was also will my mother from france the capital of vermont is montpelier i have two sisters and a dog the square root of two is approximately 1.41 the proper conjugation of the german word sein ich bin du bist er sie es ist... Draper's chest heaved as he returned to normal in the projection. The volcano was flaccid once more.
His mind began to converse with his brain as though each had its own consciousness. They're zapping my will. Ha ha your name is will and if you pee you will get zapped. What mean trick of evolution would allow any being to feel this? Well why do you think god gave you a brain silly. One of the arms now started to press in pulses on his bladder. A little squirt came out before he could stop it. So you would pee your pants his brain told his mind. Shame.
Very weak electric pulses now accompanied the tickling. Not enough to cause pain but only enough for subconscious receptors to notice something was different. Inhibited muscles danced ever so slightly. His mind could feel his body rise and dematerialize into the aether as it increased in size to embrace heavenly earth-mother. Cerberos and the harpies morphed to the Archangel Gabriel and the whole heavenly host flying in seven directions through him, tickling his stretched limbs and trembling body with electric spirits. Gravity disappeared as earth, wind, fire, water joined to form one ur-force, nature and soul united. His brain teased his mind; did hims have a accident. Oh to sleep in one's own bed with nary a care is the dream of a feeble mind. Shut up shut up his mind told his brain. Oh God has it been hours? Is earth-mother playing games with your tender bits.
Minutes, hours, and days melded as time lost meaning. His brain said, “Gabriel in heaven is eternal.” The hum died and Draper's projection went black. The tickling ceased and his mind slowly reunited with his brain and body. This might have been a trick, or perhaps he was to be sent to the tank again. Maybe his rescuers had arrived and destroyed his captors' generators. He did not dare move.
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Edgerton calculated it must have been only two days since his capture. Naked, wet, and exhausted from hunger and thirst, he accompanied two of his captors from the isolation tank to whatever awaited him next. He had no idea how many hours he had spent in the tank; the prolonged deprivation of his senses made him long for any sensation, but even the dank smell, the dim light, and the sound of his captors' footsteps were presently overwhelming his psyche.
He was given a large canteen and a voice from a loudspeaker told him to drink. He assumed it was poisoned or drugged, but his vital instincts took over, and like an animal he eagerly quenched his thirst. His thoughts had begun to welcome death, and poison no longer seemed the threat it would have 24 hours ago. He was made to lie stomach-up on a long, smooth table, just wide enough to support his entire frame. As his sense of sight returned he could make out what appeared to be tiny holes on the ceiling, in a rectangular pattern roughly the size and shape of the table; he could also see his nameless, voiceless abductors standing there with their guns. I could just jump up and run about, and they would shoot me... it would be over quick, he thought. His mind was coming back fast – there must have been a stimulant in the water he drank – and he tried to put all thoughts of death out of his mind. He was sure he would be rescued soon, if only he could hold out and endure whatever torture they had in store for him.
The voice told him to stretch his arms straight out over his head, and he complied. So it's to be bondage, then, he thought, and images of whips, canes, knuckles, and torturous flaying tools dashed through his mind one by one in an instant. He lay there for a moment as his masters quickly left the room. His sense of touch was coming back and presently he had intense itches on his nose, cheeks, buttocks. He had but to think of a part of his body and his mind would somehow provide the requisite itching sensation. He did not dare move, though. A sudden, pleasant hum surrounded him and enveloped his fragile ears, and a light fog descended from the walls.
“Do not panic,” said the voice in a cloying, sickly sweet tone. “The fog is not poisonous; it is merely to show you the size of your cage.” As the fog approached, a grid of lasers materialized slowly on all sides, none of them more than two or three inches from his body. Hence the holes on the ceiling, he reasoned. He could feel his heart jump when small compartments all around the table opened and sleek, robotic arms snaked their way over seemingly every itchy spot on his body. The voice told him, “here are the rules. Those mechanical arms – we like to call them 'effectors' – are very fragile. A man of your strength could easily break them.”
At this moment an image of Draper, his longtime friend and partner, appeared in projection on the ceiling. Draper was was bound tightly to a rack, and his body appeared to be covered with electrodes. So they got you too, thought Edgerton. The voice continued, “The effectors will start lightly and begin to merely tickle you. However, if any of the lasers around you is breached, the implements on the end of each effector will get incrementally sharper and will apply more pressure, and they will thereby slowly shred your skin.
“In addition, each time you touch a laser, we will send a progressively more painful shock through your partner here. The table you are lying on can sense your weight. If you remove yourself from the table, or if any of the effectors is broken, your partner will die a slow, painful death by electrocution, and you will be made to listen to his cries. There are sensors under you which will detect urination; any urine you spill will cause the effectors to send a shock through you with each touch.”
Edgerton could see Draper's eyes in the projection. They evinced a feeling of urgent dread simultaneous with an air of understanding and even forgiveness. Draper's eyes seemed to be saying, we are in this together... do what you have to do... I will see you on the other side. I wonder if he can see me, Edgerton thought.
“One last thing before we begin,” the voice said; “your room is equipped with a sound pressure level meter. If you utter so much as a peep, it will have the same effect as if you had touched a laser.” At this, the room went dark, and he was left staring into the frightened eyes of Draper. So it is bondage of the worst kind, he thought: I must remain bound and gagged by my own will. His mind told him he would be able to end this at any time; his loyalty to Draper told him otherwise.
The little arms by his feet began their cold, mechanical movement. Paradoxically-soft steel with a myriad of textures on his starved, bare soles sent pangs of intense tickling through his spine. His brain worked full force to inhibit his inherent reflexes which traveled back from his spine to his legs. A burgeoning consciousness flooded his mind, and he became hyper-aware of the rhythmic semi-unison of the pulse in his torso and in his extremities. A gentle circulation of air kept his skin dry and receptive. My God, his brain told him, the ticklish fire in my feet. His brain flashed images of fast-moving snails in grass and visions of Christ gliding effortlessly over the water, in severe juxtaposition to Draper's concentrated brow. His toes began subtle machinations of their own.
Breathing joined in counter-rhythm to his heartbeat as the lifeless steel near his shorn armpits gained vitality. He felt his will slip momentarily in a twitch of his outstretched arms. His mind saw forty feminine fingers gently forcing him into maniacal submission, their soft pads and nails amusing themselves in wicked delight. His body tried to roll over to escape as his whole ticklish torso was brought rudely from deprivation to sensory deluge. His fingers began to undulate as though he were playing an instrument, and his palms longed for at least a metal bar to hold on to. He lay nearly motionless and silent as the machine performed its mean business, tickling him on his soles and upper torso.
Time blurs in sensory overload as it did in the deprivation tank. Had he spent mere seconds or a half hour on this torturous table? The silent humming and monochrome vision of Draper on the ceiling intensified his sense of touch, while the stimulant from the water he drank was bringing him to the most heightened self awareness he had ever felt. After a long-short moment his belly was now aflame, as the effectors began traversing his ribs and abdomen, coming too-near his crotch. His mind watched as fifty reticent maidens thoughtlessly danced their rounds, trampling the hills and valleys of his homeland, to their north two perky peaks, and to their south a vehement volcano. Some of his slick foot-snails had escaped to his knees and thighs.
His brain yearned for his body to thrash around, and tried to persuade his mind with images of carp on the deck of a boat and that kid who fell off of the swings in third grade. He wished he could simply escape into unconsciousness but the stimulant would have none of it. The twisted robots were programmed to start and stop in unison, like fire ants, in pseudo-random patterns only a computer could predict. A crowd in his mind chanted: no escape without death no escape without death.
As the arms continued to tickle him, he could feel a lion roar trapped in his larynx, ready to escape. His mind was singing to him, a drunken clown leading a chorus of kindergarten tots with a rusty pennywhistle in a banal nursery rhyme – tickle tickle to and fro, not too fast not too slow. The lion in his throat tried to join in. He was conscious of each touch as he imagined a disembodied nervous system lying on the table. An effector swooped in to glance his hip, and he watched as light traveled from the nerve, through the spine, and up to the brain. No nerve seemed exempt. Tickle tickle to and fro... He lay there like that, as tickling and pain started to lose their identity as discrete sensations.
The stimulant apparently took double action as a diuretic, and as the tickling went on he could feel the tickle-pain of his bladder becoming prolific with the water he had just drunk. His mind turned to images of an old lemonade fountain, the smell of the ocean, the feeling of moist towels on his hands. He did not dare let it out, but he worried he might lose control. Oh the delight and anguish of consciousness, remarked the clown between a verse and the refrain.
Minutes passed. The random starting and stopping of his robot torture did not allow his body or brain to become accustomed or desensitized; it was as though each touch was the first. He began to wish for real straps or ropes or anything to exert against. He closed his eyes, and the negative of Draper burned in his retina slowly transformed into the nasty creatures of ancient mythology. He was ravaged by the many-headed hydra and the three moist tongues of mighty cerberos. Several stone-cold gorgons arose from the ground and snakes slithered from their heads to curl about his limbs. Harpies descended, and demons and devils blew in from the four corners of the earth to torment him with feathers and forks. Jesus doesn't love kids who pee their pants.
Pupils in closed eyes drilled holes in eyelids, and he opened them to see an image of Draper writhing in agony. Had he slipped? He noticed in horror that his erect penis had tripped one of the lasers. The maidens on the hill prayed for the volcano to erupt and danced a bit harder than before. The demons began to tickle more ferociously, and his turgid penis stood upright as a monument to pain and desire. Inhibit, he told himself. Think: my name is will edgerton i live in new york my father was also will my mother from france the capital of vermont is montpelier i have two sisters and a dog the square root of two is approximately 1.41 the proper conjugation of the german word sein ich bin du bist er sie es ist... Draper's chest heaved as he returned to normal in the projection. The volcano was flaccid once more.
His mind began to converse with his brain as though each had its own consciousness. They're zapping my will. Ha ha your name is will and if you pee you will get zapped. What mean trick of evolution would allow any being to feel this? Well why do you think god gave you a brain silly. One of the arms now started to press in pulses on his bladder. A little squirt came out before he could stop it. So you would pee your pants his brain told his mind. Shame.
Very weak electric pulses now accompanied the tickling. Not enough to cause pain but only enough for subconscious receptors to notice something was different. Inhibited muscles danced ever so slightly. His mind could feel his body rise and dematerialize into the aether as it increased in size to embrace heavenly earth-mother. Cerberos and the harpies morphed to the Archangel Gabriel and the whole heavenly host flying in seven directions through him, tickling his stretched limbs and trembling body with electric spirits. Gravity disappeared as earth, wind, fire, water joined to form one ur-force, nature and soul united. His brain teased his mind; did hims have a accident. Oh to sleep in one's own bed with nary a care is the dream of a feeble mind. Shut up shut up his mind told his brain. Oh God has it been hours? Is earth-mother playing games with your tender bits.
Minutes, hours, and days melded as time lost meaning. His brain said, “Gabriel in heaven is eternal.” The hum died and Draper's projection went black. The tickling ceased and his mind slowly reunited with his brain and body. This might have been a trick, or perhaps he was to be sent to the tank again. Maybe his rescuers had arrived and destroyed his captors' generators. He did not dare move.