He shoves the door open. Bounding down the stairs two at a time, like he's familiar with the place. He's never been there before, but he meets up with customers in all kinds of weird places.
Looking around, eating smoke. Almost careless, to the observer who doesn't know. But his size, and his line of work, are his protection. The cellar was sized up before he set foot inside. No one else entered; he'd been watching the door for three cigarettes.
There's one light bulb. He walked toward it, looking around. Furniture, and shelving, covered with dark tarps. None of them moving...
He stands there, taking a long drag. The cellar is silent, except for him. No sound makes it down from the first floor overhead. These old buildings are solid.
The ceiling is high, for a cellar. Twelve feet, maybe. He cocks his head and blows smoke at it - missing the black thing which swoops down behind him.
Flying to his right arm, dipping down, reversing when it's in position - and pulling tight.
The contact makes him look - calmly, without being startled. He's that certain nobody else is around.
And when he sees it, he stares.
A thick leather strap is tightening. No - a cuff.
The loop, like a slip knot, is already snug on his wrist. It's not a cuff, and it's far thicker. Layered. Surprising that it's flexible enough to do what it's doing.
As he lifts his arm, fingers clenching, the loose end of the outermost strap is already passing through the buckle.
His mouth tightens. Another quick look around, to confirm - nobody watching. Sensibly, he stays calm. Used to acting first, and thinking later. Planting his feet, he reaches for the cuff with his left hand.
It moves. Fast.
More precisely... it flies over his head.
That surprises him. No visible method, but his right hand is way up there now. He pulls...
But it doesn't move.
He hesitates - only for an instant - and fights harder. Clawing at it with his free hand, tugging...
Another cuff races up, impossibly quick. Lassoing his left wrist as he whips it down. Set, jerked and flying up to meet the other one.
Immediately, he goes into a squat, stomping down.
Instead of dropping, his legs break contact with the ground.
The cuffs lift him up a few inches.
Dangling now, he looks at the ground.
The cellar door slams and locks.
Squinting at his restraints, growling with the effort of trying to pull his arms free, he swings a little. The cuffs, exaggerated bondage props, uniquely solid and heavy, move apart. His fingers reach for each other, try to reach the buckles.
A jingling sound grows a little louder.
Chain - shiny, big links. Three-inch hooks on each end - and one catches the D-rings on his right wrist. Pulling tight, straight up. He's determined to pull his arm free.
But the chain keeps rising. Through a hole, above the light fixture. And back down.
Thrashing around, eyes locked on his left hand, he concentrates on making it move. And it shifts. That's all. He's overpowered. The cuffs are able to hold steady.
The left hook snaps. Spring-loaded tongues close the hooks. The open sides are facing out. His fingers reach for the tongues, but they're out of his reach.
The chain rattles, and he descends. His toes touch the floor.
And suddenly, his wrists are released. Not by the cuffs - but the invisible pressure that held him in check is gone. No longer needed.
He swings, putting his whole weight on the chains. Kicking down at the right point in his arc to put the maximum load on the hooks, the D-rings...
Slamming around, twisting, inverting himself so he could kick at the chains. The leather has to tear loose eventually.
After a variety of manuevers get tried, a few times each, he stops moving. Eyes roaming around, breathing faster but no louder than two minutes before. He isn't wasting his energy... and he isn't wasting his breath.
A different color floats out of the shadows.
Purple.
Gloves.
He doesn't start to flop around until they're a less than a yard away. Eyes fixed on the cuffs again, trying to whipsaw them, he tenses up. Bracing for impact -
Right under his navel. Bare skin, since his arms are straight up.
But he doesn't get punched. He hisses.
The fingers are... rubbing. They're cold, and smooth. That shiny stuff fuckin' dresses are made out of.
They trace back and forth.
He looks at them - the glove hanging in front of his chest. And then the other. The one that's...
Tickling.
Tickling him.
His face couldn't look more shocked. A second later, his expression changes - as if they were pulling out a splinter -
And in the next second, he sags. A smile breaks out. Big, unwilling grin. Every muscle is taut. But he smiles, and inhales raggedly.
"Nuh huh huh huh huh nuh no no aw fuck no nnnnuh huh huh haw haw haw haw haw oh nnnnohh..."
His grin is huge.
He's definitely... ticklish. And he's going to get tickled. Severe, unending, intricately thorough tickling.
The second glove moves in. Together, they roll his shirt up. It won't stay put, of course, as he squirms. But his ribs are exposed. That confirms the obvious.
Both gloves start in. Gliding, scratching lightly.
"Whooooo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo haw haw haaaaawhuh huh huh huh hee hee heeeeeee nnnneeeeee heeeee nuh nuh whoooooo whuh whuh aaaaaawwwww whuh huh haw haw haaaaaaw..."
He bucks, and kicks. Swinging wildly again. The gloves ride along, tickling easily and continuously.
His arms curl, lifting him higher. That gets him closer to the chains, but with no hand free to do anything. So he lifts his entire weight with his left arm, and tries to reach overhead with his right -
The chain skips a link, rebalancing the weight suspended from it.
He tries again, switching arms - and a set of fingers crawls under his shirt.
"Nuh," he huffs, shaking now. It isn't the exertion of holding himself up. His composure is disintegrating in direct proportion to the path of the glove. Lower ribs, upper ribs -
Armpit.
A loud, outraged yell - then his arms go slack, and he laughs harder. The fingers are soft, so soft, and they're burrowing under his arm. He can't do a single thing to stop them...
Looking desperately around the room, tears springing from his eyes, he sees other activity. Squinting into the dark, he sees the tarps moving -
The other glove presses into his shirt, and rubs his navel.
"Naaaaaaa hah hah hah oh faaah haaaaaooooeeee heeee puh puleeeeee seeeee AAAAHHHH HAAAAH HAAAWWW hoh hoh hooooowuhhhhnnnNNNEEEEE..."
Head thrown back, and roaring freely. True, fierce roars. He shakes his head, face turned toward the cuffs, aiming a lot of noise at the ceiling.
But no one comes to his aid.
And no one ever will.
Hot tears run down his face. Grinning from ear to ear, involuntarily. The racked smile of a man with a weakness, living a particular nightmare he absolutely can't tolerate.
Distracted, he doesn't see what the tarps were covering...
Racks, benches, suspension braces, swings.
Shelves filled with hoods and crops, vibrators, toys, oils, rotary tools, rings and clamps, and brushes of all kinds.
Invincible fingers slip into his sweat pants and find the drawstring. They pull it out, undo the knots... and tug.
Two more gloves cruise by his spastic feet. They wait - for now - near his shoes.
In the alley, trash bags and wet cardboard are moving. They're heaped up against the door. Three dead rats, in varying stages of decomposition, provide extra incentive for scavengers to steer clear.
The dumpster slides back into its usual place. Now the door is barely visible.
On the inner side, layers of thick foam are taped over the entry.
Fifteen psychotic minutes, and the gloves peel off.
He gasps for awhile, and starts snapping at the chains. As if he weighed nothing, they pull him up a little more. No visible means.
Something slides behind him, moving out from the wall. Metal, scraping. Something heavy. He gets a glimpse before it arrives. A bench?
A pad hits his ass.
Gloves catch his ankles and raise them.
There's a footrest... with enormous cuffs.
He finds energy he didn't even know he had. Kicking and growling, doing his best to whip-saw his legs -
But his underwear is pulled off.
Then his shoes, and socks.
"No!" he yells. A loud, ringing shout, followed by a few more.
The gloves get each leg positioned and close the wide, thick cuffs. Set the buckles.
He shakes his head miserably, the fight draining out of him. "No," he says again - only this time he's grovelling like a punk.
The chains adjust a little, and stop moving. His arms are just as stuck, but they're not supporting his weight any more. He's leaning on the small, thick pad. He throws himself around again, in all directions. Can't budge at all, not really...
And his feet remain trapped.
"Five hundred large," he barks. "Yours. Right now. J-just let me go..."
The gloves move in. Oh fuck, not his feet. Not his feet -
Perfectly horrible fingers start to creep.
He sucks in air and goes rigid. The heaving starts in his chest. Laughter, held back, way too much for him. It's going to bust out. And keep on coming...
With blurry eyes, he looks around the room. Squinting at a horizontal rack, a massive leather sling, the manacles. Boxes with feathers sticking out of them.
A million, he thinks wildly. They can't turn that down. Where he'd get that kind of dough, he has no idea. But he has to try. It's all he has left. So he rehearses it, in his mind. Say it. Don't laugh. Don't let the roars get out, just yell the words. One million.
Shaking hard, he forces his lips open -
And howls. Yelling laughter as hard as he can. Roaring, whooping with a whole new determination, shocking himself.
No, dammit, say the words. One million...
But he can't.
He jerks irratically and laughs. No matter what he tries, he can't get his legs free.
The fingers crawl a little faster. Or there's more of them.
He screams laughter, like a fuckin' girl. That makes him mad... so he settles back into that banshee roar.
An hour after the sun sets, Frankie shuts off the parabolic mic. Grinning from ear to ear. A mean grin.
He gets off his knees and packs up the listening gear. What a shithole. Built like a fuckin' fortress, though...
Brushing the dust from his slacks, he chuckles to himself. He looks around the janitor's closet, and nods. Standing right above the cellar, he can't hear a thing. No clue. It's perfect.
The pipes are blocked off, somehow, and the vents. He'd been checking for a half-hour. Listening hard, just with his ears... then a stethoscope. Not a ghost of a howl made it up to the first floor, here.
He never would've brought the fancy mic. It was their suggestion. That weird computerized voice, coming over the phone. No inflection. The words could've been just boasting...
He felt like a dick, walking in here with the fancy easvesdropping shit - but they were right.
They hadn't missed a trick. The trap is perfect.
Right in the middle of the city, too. The building had been forgotten by the suits. Ignored for years. Nothing was scheduled for it, no inspections, no appraisals. Frankie had checked.
And now he'd found out, for himself, that the hypes and the other street trash that had broken in would never fuckin' hear what was taking place under their feet...
So Frankie goes outside, and stands by the dumpster. Damn, but it reeks. No way he's gonna step any closer to try the door. Not in these shoes...
He gets out the high-powered mic, and turns it up as far as it would go. Holds it up close, maybe a yard from the doorway.
Nothing.
If he hadn't heard the faint howls with this fancy high-tech gear, when he was in the broom closet, he never woulda believed it.
Packing it up again, he looks around and gets a cigarette going. Then he pulls out his phone. Punches a number...
"Yeah. It's done," he says, blowing smoke at the dumpster. "You wouldn't believe how screwed he is..."
This is too just good to be true. Everybody wins. The asshole is out of the picture, so Frankie's boss can go ahead now and move in on the sharks. Expand his action. Don't off him, the boss had said - we don't need an all-out war. He didn't care where the musclehead went, so long as he doesn't show his fuckin' face for a month.
Just make him go away. Long enough. And when he shows up again, basically okay... he's gonna find out some things have changed in the neighborhood.
Frankie had this phone number...
And Frankie, he hated the asshole's guts.
Make it two months, he'd said. If you can pull it off. What you're talkin' about... double it. Really make him sweat.
The beauty of it was, they caught on. That computerized voice. They'd take real good care of him, alright. It's what they do. And they got the message - no real deadline, to let the fucker go. At least two months.
If it ran long, so much the better.
Frankie nods, though nobody's there to see. "You won't believe this setup, boss. Never seen security like this. Uh-huh... He's gonna cool his heels for a month... or two..." He bites back the urge to laugh out loud. "And there ain't gonna be so much as a mark on him. Locked up tight. Yeah..."
He grins even harder.
"Okay. You need anything else tonight?... A sweet little redhead. Lap-dancer. Yeah. Thanks, boss."
He punches the "off" button on the phone, and enjoys a long drag. Frankie springs the butt at the dumpster. Watches it bounce and land, adding to the pile of shit laying there. The camouflage...
Nobody except him knows where the asshole is. And he's roaring his head off. He's gonna wear out his voice tonight... but the fun goes on and on. Two months of that. Or three.
Frankie did laugh, right then. What a fuckin' nightmare. Only one man can call it off... and Frankie liked the idea of things staying just the way they were.
Shit. He didn't even want to think about it too hard. Imagine what it would be like.
He'd rather die than trade places with that laughing gorilla right now. Fuck ... If the pros, in that cellar there, if they only knew how bad Frankie himself was - well, shit. He didn't know how they got his number. They found him. But hell, right now, he didn't care. The setup is sweet. Damn.
And I brought it down on him, he thinks happily. It's all me. Puttin' it to the asshole. Keep on laughing, down there, shit-for-brains. Ain't gettin' out of here until summer -
He starts to put his phone away. It catches on his pocket, or something. Weird. A little... tug, almost, and it -
While he looks at the phone, the fuckin' battery falls off. Hits the ground.
"Aw, shit," he says automatically. Frankie reaches down for it.
He doesn't see the car pull up, at the end of the alley. But he hears it. Rolling to a stop.
His mind's already working - maybe, what, sixty feet away. Okay. Use the dumpster as a shield, and the other end of the alley is wide open. No problem. It's probably some fuckin' tourist anyway.
Frankie looks, as he straightens up. Black car. Dark windows. Shit -
One of the doors - a back door - swings open. Good, he thinks. Trouble would be riding up front -
Wait. Nobody there.
He stares. There's nobody in there. In the back seat. But the door -
What the fuc-
Something pulls the phone battery out of his hand. It floats away from him, in the air. Hops into the dumpster.
"What?," he mutters, taking a step back.
Hands grab him. Arms, legs. Maybe a dozen of 'em. One slams over his mouth. Smooth, soft, and cool. Dark purple.
Empty.
He has time, as he's dragged to the car, to look around. Then he's sure. Just gloves. Strong fuckers. But there ain't nobody else here.
Can't happen oh, no, not him too!
They push him in easily. And the car rolls.
His clothes are pulled off, and the straps are totally fuckin' sung, way before they hit the bridge.
After the first couple minutes, Frankie laughs so hard he pisses himself.
It's so much fuckin' worse than his worst nightmares. Oh, fuck, his belly. He can't stand this.
The toll booth. His last chance. They couldn't run the toll booth. He howled, and shouted laughter as hard as he could. Maybe they'd clamp a glove over his mouth again - but hell, they're gonna have to roll down the window...
He forgets about it for a while, because the tickling is too fuckin' much.
When Frankie gets it together enough to open his eyes - no bridge.
They're off the bridge. Past it. How the hell did they get off the bridge without stopping to pay th-
And it hits him. That bar-code thing. They got a bar-code, one of those stickers. Slow down a little, but you don't have to stop. Pay the toll ahead of time.
They were out of the city. Oh no, fuck no, he was being taken way out in the sticks.
An old shed. No mutherfuckin' lights for a couple miles around.
But inside, it's all fixed up. It's tight as a submarine. All decked out...
There's way more than a couple fuckin' months of food on the shelves.
The gloves probably got bigger plans for the musclehead, too. Double the fun. Fuck! Nobody else knows he's down in the basement, laughing his guts out.
Frankie won't be talking to anyone for a long fuckin' time. He's gonna get it too. No loose ends.
The thick door swings closed. Locking him in. Padded. And it booms. Deep, metal sound. Locking.
It ain't fair, he wants to shout. We did a deal. That other guy gets it. Stuck good. But not me. You gotta let me go, this is nuts, I can't go through months of what you fuckers dish out.
He's carried over to a big rack. Straps getting loose - and the ends fly down, where he can't see. Metal, jingling.
And then Frankie slams down, against some pads, as the straps pull tighter than ever.
"No nnnohwaaahhahhaaaaaaah," he shouts. But the fingers keep workin' him over, and it's the worst thing they could ever do to him. Way too much. His belly, and his ass. Shit - all over his feet!
And they're pros.
Major tickling.
You can't, he wants to say. Not me. The words won't come out. Roaring just like the asshole, back there. Months of this.
We had a deal, dammit. Not me - him. Not both of us.
The fingers get busy under his knees. He can't believe the kind of screaming laughter that explodes out of him.
Go double up on him, damn you. But he just can't talk.
He throws his head back and forth, but they ignore him. And keep tickling. Real hard.
Get him. Not me. Nobody else knows. I won't tell. We had a deal. A deal...
They slide between his toes, again. Over and over. Absolute fuckin' pros.
08apr02