The football was too heavy.
He'd picked it up from a display in front of the sports bar. The sign had some beer chick on it, and a handwritten note - "ONE PER GATORS FAN, OKAY GUYS?"
Somebody must've set up the table while he and Rocky were inside. They just looked at each other, and shrugged...
Way too heavy for an ordinary football. The orange metallic texture was cool, though, and the logo looked great. He turned it over in his hands -
There was a little black nub, Almost like a button.
He pushed it.
Tiny pinpricks of current tingled under his fingers - which tightened their grip around the ball. The damn thing seemed to be humming or vibrating. He tried to drop it - and couldn't let go.
The football started clicking quietly. He tried to throw it away, or shake it off... but his fingers wouldn't release.
Shiny tubes started poking out of the skin. One of the little snaking arms that had just punctured the ball seemed to have a marble at the end, or something -
Another one curved down and sprayed something on his wrist. The goop was a lot like that canned stringy stuff kids used to squirt at each other... except that these strands were narrower, bright red, and sticky as hell.
"Hey," he yelled, pulling at the shit which was already hardening. A second too late, he saw another load of red glue, or whatever it was, spray across his other hand.
He pulled frantically. The damn thing was stuck to him -
Another tube punched its way out and exploded, shooting out a bunch of shiny white patches. Each of them unfolded... into thin gloves.
Out of reflex, he backed away. The edge of the kitchen table caught his hip, and he stumbled, going down -
He felt a jerk, and stopped dead in the air about six inches from the linoleum.
When he looked, he saw two gloves clamped around his biceps. They were holding him up. He could almost see through 'em, but fuck - they were strong enough to support his weight.
"Haaaaaalllp!" he shouted, getting afraid.
A glove slapped over his mouth.
Fingers dove into his armpits.
He couldn't believe it. Yelling... then laughing, he swung around. More gloves were settling on his stomach, clamping around his ribs - and they had nothing inside them. Oh, there was a skinny wire running from each one and back to the football, and he thought he got a quick look at tiny criss-crossed mesh inside one of them, but they were far too strong for empty gloves.
He wanted to figure it out but the fingers were doing unbelievable things to his sides, right through his t-shirt. No matter what he tried to do, the gloves kept tickling the fuck out of him. Just shrieking with laughter, attacked by all those hands and still gagged by the one over his mouth, he started to get dizzy.
Wrestling as much as he could resulted in falling to the kitchen floor. It was only from about a foot off the ground, though...
They weren't made of rubber, and they didn't look like silk either. But they had his number, alright.
There was a beeping sound.
He opened his eyes and saw a little glass ball, on a tube... aimed at his face.
Beyond that, it looked like his bedroom ceiling. How did he get moved from the kitchen? He started sitting up - but his hands wouldn't budge. They were stuck -
The football was on his head. He tugged, but it didn't move much. Apparently there was a chin-strap now. He got so busy trying to pull it off that it took him several seconds to notice that his clothes were gone.
A glove cruised down. Two gloves, five, ten -
As soon as he grabbed a big breath so he could yell, one of the gloves slapped down over his mouth.
The gloves were touching down. His sides - and worse, his armpits - were wide open.
Wham!
Screaming, laughing, he flopped all around...
He was on fire. It wasn't slowing down either.
Twisting around didn't work. He couldn't get up - and it dawned on him that a glove was pinning each of his elbows. Some were holding his ankles down, and fingers really laid into his feet. He couldn't squirm enough, or roar any harder. It tickled so much. Too much...
They rubbed his thighs and dragged over his stomach. A pair did breathtaking things to his neck...
It was a world of insane joy that went wrong, so wrong, and he couldn't thrash around enough to get the damn ball off his head. His hands couldn't pull away. The little camera, or whatever it was, watched his face most of the time, looking around at the room now and then.
So perfectly stuck. Howling, into a fuckin' gag, he didn't want to believe it. That didn't matter at all, of course. The hands didn't care what he thought.
There was a beep, every so often.
Eventually, more beeps. One every second?
Then a longer one, and the gloves backed off. There was something final, different, about their letting go that time.
Gasping like a fish, he made himself look up.
The lens was still aimed at his face -
A glove was returning to the football. Not reeling back in or anything, but moving like it was going to take hold. He was so relieved that the fingers were laying off that nothing else mattered. The tickling was over.
The glove pointed its index finger...
He remembered the little black button. "Nuuuuuh!," he shouted.
There was the softest possible click.
The ball, strapped to the top of his head, seemed to vibrate just a little.
For ten seconds, none of the gloves moved.
Aw no, he thought desperately, aw please -
They woke up and attacked him again. The tickling was every bit as devoted...
Hours and hours seemed to go by. He was in a weird state of mind. Nothing would've surprised him anymore... and that was proven when the strong black gloves came and tied him up. They had no wires connecting them to the football, and it was not the biggest surprise of the day that a couple of them uncoiled thick white rope.
Hogtied, he couldn't detect them having any trouble carting him down the hall, and through the back door.
Fuck, not even the blue van idling out there was a shock. Four other guys were inside it, tied like he was and just as sweaty, snickering and cackling. Rocky looked really zoned, but he managed to nod a greeting of sorts to his best bud just before the van rolled out.
12jun05