He knew, before he even closed the door, that he wasn't alone.
The little kitchenette to his right was almost buried in boxes and bags. The bathroom door was gone.
The rest of the house was a single room maybe ten meters square. Six or seven things - disassembled furniture? - were covered by silver tarps, but none had sufficient space hidden to conceal a baddie. Thankfully the fireplace was uninhabited.
Of course he was looking for another person. He drew his gun and ducked down - shots might well be coming at center-mass level. Hustling forward, his eyes scanned the stockpile in the kitchen for anyone hiding within it. Canned food, whey protein supplement, various medical supplies, a straitjacket...
He stopped suddenly. The sleeves were the giveaway. True, the widest parts seemed to have replaced with mere straps, but the buckles on the end of each sleeve were accompanied by leather cuffs. Obviously that had no business being here.
Silently, he opened an unmarked box nearby -
Feathers. A huge bag, all shapes and colors. Ten pounds of feathers, easily.
There was some threat indicated that was far worse - far more personal? - than an intruder. He wanted to back away and leave. He started to imagine uses for which the custom straitjacket would be necessary -
Stop it, he told himself. Secure the site.
Easing forward, he checked his balance and rushed the bathroom.
Empty.
Checking behind once again, he relaxed. Walked back out. The bed had a solid oak pedestal, and he checked around it just to make sure. No gap for a baddie to crawl through and hide in. The tarps couldn't have been hiding anyone, but he'd go through the motions soon and make sure.
He sat on the bed. Black satin sheet. Odd. The texture underneath was unusual too.
It had been two nonstop days of traveling, but he was sure no one had managed to follow him. No one else could be in the damn safe house - without making noise of some kind by now.
Habit made him check the ceiling for unexpected risks. There were about a dozen rings up there. Big O-bolts. He tried to figure out why they'd been put there. Most were over the bed. Corners, and sides -
The door slammed.
He jumped a mile...
And then saw the straitjacket hanging in mid-air.
His mind betrayed him, instantly visualizing the feathers again.
A frightening connection, unlikely as hell, suggested what was in store. He had to get out now -
Fear drove him to his feet. Toward the only exit. Draw the straitjacket away from the door, just lure it away as if... there was a person holding it.
Something clamped around his left ankle.
He kicked - and couldn't throw it off. Risking a glance, he expected to see big hands.
Nothing there.
Quick movement swung over, from the right. Hissing. Some gas -
A punch to the gut, from yet another invisible hand, made him gasp.
Immediately the room started to spin. The nutty odor had been impossible to avoid, when he was slugged that high in the belly. Drugged.
He was shoved backward...
It seemed like no time had passed when he opened his eyes.
The little window in the kitchen was dark... and there were thick slats bolted over it now.
The door had changed too. One feeble light was behind him, way up near the ceiling, but he made out chains pulled tight and bolted to the door frame.
He was - impossibly, yet almost predictably - caught in the straitjacket, wearing that and nothing else. Straps were buckled to him all along the sleeves and shoulders, with two counter-anchoring his wrists.
As he started pulling at the restraints, a flashlight clicked on.
No one was holding it.
He stopped flailing... and just stared. The trained, composed part of his brain started considering adversaries and alt-science research topics that might explain this shit.
A piece of paper floated to the flashlight, and they both came in front of his face.
The safehouse had been deactivated... eight days ago.
He studied the letter again. The timing couldn't have been worse. A week and a half ago he'd checked the roster - hell, this house had been used for more than twenty years! Ever since then he'd been busy with the assignment. To get to a line that was definitely secure would've required doubling back again. If only he'd just done that - or if the handoff hadn't been interrupted. He could've gone straight to the airport, and if only his encrypted satellite phone hadn't fallen off his belt when he jumped onto the boxcar's ladder.
The sector code was legit. Instructions to the nearest safehouse, about forty miles away, were correct too - he'd used that one before. It smelled like mold, or else he would've been there right now, drinking beer, no damn straitjackets in sight...
The letter had no flaw, so far as he could see, to prove it was a forgery.
Letter and flashlight backed off, moving toward the mantel. He strained at the straps again.
There was a click -
The landline switch compartment opened.
That was every bit as amazing. The guys who set up these places took great pride in hiding the lights. Not a trace of the door could be seen - and the button was hidden just as well, behind the toilet. It would take someone a long, long time to find -
A green light clicked on.
The bulb seemed too small... and dammit, it should've been red.
The flag to keep others away from the safehouse, for his protection and theirs too, was tied in to the sat-link. When the trigger button was pressed, it was like the "occupied" sign on an airplane lavatory. Everyone would stay clear - well, until the annual restocking.
But all of the circuits here were shut off. A decommissioned safehouse was left alone completely. And he'd never been told about any other lights...
"Green," he mumbled to himself. Go. Green light for - who? Or what? Not him, that was for sure. He looked around.
Something unbelievable was coming.
Six white gloves - with nobody wearing them!
Tickling hands, he thought. Unbelievable, surrealistic...
His biggest personal secret. The hardest part of his pain endurance training - not that they'd tickled him much, and it was a good thing he was still aching all over and totally disoriented when they did.
The most vivid nightmare woke him up, drenched in sweat, for years after the tickle weekend. That was when a crazy kinesthetics major, in a sorority house, had really worked him over . Two frat brothers who'd never liked jocks had gotten him drunk and led him into the basement, dragging him to the bed and barely managing to get the gloves on him and epoxy them to the headboard before they fled. After she'd worn him out, the guys put tie-downs to work...
It had never been really clear who knew, or found about, his primal weakness. He'd avoided that street for the rest of his time at school.
Now, though, empty fingers were coming for him.
A more intense shredding - over a lot longer period of time - made no more sense than stuff being active on its own, or carried by some invisible lover of this composure-destroying stimulation...
Magic hands to tickle him. Well, sure.
The straitjacket gave him a clue how intent they were. Crazy people needed straitjackets - and there was no telling how much tickle-torture stuff was in the safehouse now.
He started flailing and whimpering like crazy. All of the weightlifting and hand-to-hand combat training didn't matter now. The baddies wanting to kill him, just before he headed for this place, might as well have been in another lifetime.
The approaching fingers were the only thing that mattered. Their mission was clear. Trapped in a remote house with tons of food, all those feathers, and who knew what else -
That triggered a new thought. He looked to his right.
All of the tarps were gone, and the furniture that was set up wasn't normal.
Racks, benches, stocks.
The tarps covering the restraining devices had been silently pulled off.
He saw a stomach-churning variety of thick, sturdy equipment to keep him immobilized.
"Please," he gasped to the gloves. It sounded pathetic. He couldn't help whining again, probably making the ghost - who had prepared everything to tickle him long and thoroughly, dammit! - real happy.
Freaking out wasn't affecting the straps at all. He looked around wildly. Do something, they're almost here. If they touch you, it's over. Just too ticklish. Exactly what they have in mind, and he had to think of something.
Chained door, barred window. Straitjacket. So many straps.
Deactivated safehouse, he thought wildly. How perfect. Miles off the road, phones turned off - and no one would be coming to do the restock and phone test, opening the door to see him strapped down. Laughing hysterically.
Unseen hands had stocked up. Brought the restraint systems in too. All set. If this wasn't the end result of extensive planning, maybe even with him as a target... maybe the invisible bastard had been about to go hunting for a victim - and then he walked right in. The tickler had wasted no time, really, with that knockout gas.
He was unbelievably screwed, here. Just pathetically ticklish. Knowing it would be a long time 'til the facilities squad dared to come in here.
No end in sight...
Slippery cloth touched his right foot. Then his left.
He tensed up, preparing to scream for help.
Nervous chuckles poured out of his mouth.
Exactly the wrong thing to do, there. Shit, the gloves hadn't even started yet. What he really needed was to get the asshole to pause... or something, so he could break a couple straps and twist the rest loose, leap up and kick his way through the damn door. He'd been in worse situations -
Gloves curled around his ribs.
Oh no, no, no. And he tensed, real fast. Hissing in a breath. This was an even bigger nightmare than he'd lived through, or dreamt up.
"Whooooo!" he yelped. Shaking his head. Don't do this, please, don't tickle me...
How could anybody, particularly a guy who'd been trained how to fight bad guys, imagine this might happen? Invisible hands, all those boxes of supplies. The flag to mark the house as occupied would keep the crews from coming in - so an agent needing the safehouse wouldn't get scared. This was unbelievable.
If he could've moved around some, maybe this wouldn't have been as scary as that bungled interrogation in Guayaquil. But he'd never dreamed somebody would do this to him. The nightmares had been intense, all right, but still he'd never dared to think about what comprehensive tickling would feel like.
He could take anything... except this.
Well, it had to stop right now. Back to the plan. What was the plan, again? He had to get this to stop before th-
"No!" he begged.
Too late.
Chuckling hopelessly, he yanked and jerked and kicked... but the fingers kept snaking into his armpits.
He whooped and bellowed. Couldn't stop.
That's it, he thought, the bastard has to knock it off right this second. Nothing else paralyzed him like this, because he just couldn't handle the firestorm of sensation.
Absurd. Crackling. Ate him up.
Get loose, he thought wildly. Someone's tickling you, get your ass away from 'em.
He slammed up and down, giggling hysterically. The invisible bastard was in the mood to tickle somebody - for a long time - and he walked right to it.
Fingers got a few tickles in on his soles again, and he just exploded with a raw howl. Kicking at 'em with all he had. Get away, let me go, I just can't take this.
But he was strapped down for serious tickling.
The sadistic prick knew he couldn't stand to be tickled. Well, it knew he was a hot prospect within the first three seconds. That's how bad he had it... If only he'd found a way to keep his mouth shut.
He had to get away.
In the meantime, the self-distraction techniques for pain tolerance had to do the trick. It seemed impossible, since he was completely unable to stop writhing and hooting... but he tried to brace himself and concentrated on the anchor image he'd trained himself to use. It came to mind immediately - a big meadow with thick white snow - and it had never failed to calm him down, during training and afterward, letting him move on to the diversionary affirmations -
The gloves on his ribs started to squeeze as they moved.
Oh, he absolutely lost it.
Wailing, barking, pounding the mattress with his soles like a little kid. He threw his head around, laughing so hard the tears welled up in his eyes. He had to get away. They weren't going to stop. No one would come close enough to hear him howl and the bastard would tickle him as hard as it wanted, for as long as it wanted, and nothing was going to change that. This was the most overwhelming, crazy-making thing ever.
He rocked as much as he could. The gloves weren't blocked at all. Armpits, ribs - and he couldn't laugh hard enough. Not even close. Oh, shit, the tickler had really lucked out. Ready for a morbidly ticklish guy. Solid restraints, supplies, the perfect place.
Gloves clamped onto both of his feet - grinding against his soles.
Screaming hysterically, he threw his legs this way and that. One glove held on, still kneading his arch. The other one caught him again within a few seconds. He started kicking again -
His armpits... lit up.
Fingers were racing - heavily - and he forgot how to move. His laughter became gutsy, desperate, deranged. He looked around, sounding happy... and tortured. That wasn't helping his case any. The bastard tickled as if it enjoyed making him suffer. No one knew he was here. No one would ever dream there were restraints and racks in the safehouse, and straps preventing him from pulling the gloves away from his throbbing sides.
That left the tickler. He had to get this son of a bitch to relent. Let him go.
He roared at the ceiling. See how intense this is, he thought dizzily. Never mind how happy I sound. You're doing that. I just can't stand this -
The gloves hovered over him. He whooped hard. Maybe it would be satisfied if he laughed harder.
It had to stop now. He was so damn ticklish and the gloves had blown the doors off already. He just couldn't deal with what the excitement was doing to him. No way to process that much fire. Ignoring it was completely out of the question, and stepping through the familiar process for pain tolerance was beyond him already. He just couldn't tear his attention away from these hands, those fingers...
The tickler would keep driving him nuts and there would be no rescue, no running away from the gloves, and sure as shit he wouldn't be pulling any other coping mechanisms out -
Over him? Wait. They were still tickling. It wasn't his imagination.
There were more gloves now. Coming down - ready to rock.
No, oh no, oh no. He tried to shake his head as he screamed.
Fingers slid under his knees.
The overall impact exploded! Every hand seemed to be filled with electricity. Even more impact he had no way at all to... feel -
His feet. No, no. Shit!
They dug in. More fingers than before.
Kicking didn't work anymore. The high-voltage current under his knees made it impossible. He tried and tried, roaring like a lunatic. This was very, very bad. The fingers had no right to tickle his feet. They kept on digging into his armpits and massaging his ribs, and he realized he had no chance whatsoever of getting away from hands that knew how to lock him up like that.
Impossibly, more hands slid up his thighs. Back down again.
Bouncing became the way out. He couldn't even manage that. Nothing he could do with his head or his fists was stopping the assault at all. He gulped air, whining, vaguely aware of sweat running down the side of his head...
With a shock, he realized he wasn't laughing. Couldn't laugh.
And that made it even worse.
Wow. He tried his best to reef on the straps, to pull his legs up - and keep laughing. It was beyond him. Power surged through him, head-to-toe, but it was coming from the gloves. Pleasure was turned up to a level that insisted he try and try to feel it all. That was absolutely impossible.
If I don't laugh - hard - this jackass won't know how much this is killing me. Insane, I'm too far gone already, the gloves are making sure I can't space out and get a grip on myself.
They started scrabbling across his belly.
He convulsed a few times - erratic, distracted - and kept on panting. Too much, too much, I can't get away from 'em and the door is chained shut, it's going to keep on tickling and tickling and tickling and tickling...
And it did.
He drifted back from a long way off. All of that insanity must be... back there, still, 'cause he was moving back to reality now. So relieved...
Ceiling.
His arms were stuck but good.
I'm pinned down, he thought, completely amazed. Didn't I just get away? Left it back there? The red-hot excitement...
This is where it happens.
He started to wrestle. The damn straitjacket was already soaked with sweat. His gut hurt from laughing, he just had to get out of here - right now, dammit, pull harder! This is where the shit happened that drove him way far... inside. A fever-nightmare. Concentrating as hard as he could was nowhere near enough.
The gloves had worked in more unthinkable stimulation than he could ever, ever keep track of. He had no idea how to stop trying...
A water bottle floated down. It had a rigid plastic straw.
After a hard coughing fit, he discovered that if he slowed down he could swallow the water, slowly, even in that position. It was so wonderful. He couldn't remember ever having worked so hard. Lying down, unable to tug anymore - hell, way past laughing at all...
He had a horrible thought. Like it or not, maybe he was unable to stop conserving his energy. Whether he wanted to wear himself out or not, the bastard was training his body to just lay there. The impact of the tickling was gonna increase over and over again. He just knew it. And he would be unable to stop himself from focusing as hard as he could on a landslide that never stopped pounding down.
His body's reaction to the tickling was gonna increase over and over again. He just knew it. And he would be unable to stop himself from focusing as hard as he could on a landslide that never stopped pounding down.
This just had to stop. He didn't care what the bastard wanted to do. Keep doing. There was no way he could stay in this converted torture chamber...
All he could do was keep trying the techniques he'd been taught. Let the sadistic magician grab somebody who wasn't trained in learning how to overcome pain. Well, alright, this was actually excitement, not pain like they gave him in training. But he had to show the invisible sadist a thing or two. Shut right down, no more response - take that, you frickin' lunatic. No more howling and wrestling around. Get some otherson of a bitch in here who doesn't have any idea he's ticklish, show him the damn feathers coming down, anchor him right. Have your fun then.
Not me, he thought grimly. I'll show you...
He took a deep breath. One - nice, quiet meadow. All that snow. O-kay. He calmed right down. A few hours from now, the stupid prick would give up. Well, shit, I don't know how this guy shut off all that ticklishness so fast, guess I better throw this one back...
That was a soothing fantasy. He ran with it. Pictured literally running away from all of this. Gone. Sprinting further and further away from the smoothly moving fingers and straps, those scary rings in the ceiling, the stocks, that bag of feathers in the kitchen and whatever tickle-toys were filling all those boxes. Not me, bub.
Calm. Great. Almost out of here. He took a last look around his anchor image, that soothing place that was his ticket out. Okay. Two -
There were gloves coming toward him again.
He jerked back. How did they get to his snow-covered meadow?
No, wait, they were coming at him. Really there, overhead, getting closer. They hadn't crashed his inner safe place. So, on to step two -
Wait. They weren't part of his visualization. Real gloves were closing in, worn by magic hands that were eager to tickle him again.
Easy, now -
"Nooooooooo!" he screeched, slamming back and forth. They tickled so much, literally unbearable. He was still their target.
Try to kick - harder! - scoot around...
Dammit, nothing worked.
Fingers were sliding over his ribs.
"No no no no haaaaaaaallllllp! Stop, staaaaaaaap!"
Oh, he was just completely desperate to get away, watching them take hold of his left side. Again. And his right. So insane, so unbearable!
Thighs. Oh, hell no.
Chest, belly...
Shins. How could his legs be this frickin' sensitive?
Quick, he thought, do the thing. The mental trick has to work, now, right now, before he got so overwhelmed. Tickling. Really, seriously tickling his captured ass.
He just whined like crazy, giggling already, slamming his head on the mattress over and over. No no no no no - stop - somebody help me, help meeeeee, but there wouldn't be anyone coming in. If it was even possible, oh shit! No. The invisible, utterly obsessed tickler would move him... to an even more secret place. And dig in, ten more times, a hundred... A thousand?
It was more mind-warping, more intense, way beyond teasing. So many fingers moving on him, picked their spots to light up, ready to ride him for another hour, or two, having made sure he couldn't do a thing to interfere.
Oh, shit. Step one. Didn't he do step one already? Why didn't it work? He was laughing and he couldn't stop. Inside, the shock was even worse than he remembered. The fingers tickled so damn much! Surrealistic. His thoughts were just bouncing. Calves, belly, feet. Way too sensitive - tickled into unthinkable sensitivity.
C'mon. Step one, step two. What was step two? Aw, hell.
Gloves began playing with his nipples.
He jerked. How the hell could his chest be this ridiculously sensitive? They were just getting started, really. Boxes full of food in the kitchen. The phantom was gonna have so much fun torturing him. Strapped down ridiculously well. Stepping up the impact, all set for weeks and weeks of it. Months?
There was something he had to do.
It was so hard to think. The barks and cackles just boomed out. They wanted more. The gloves. No, the bastard wearing 'em. A total expert at this. It had free rein when he was completely helpless, way too excited to move. Months...
What could he do? Getting up was definitely out. Oh, hell, they were rubbing his calves again. So ridiculously intense. Think, think -
He'd been trained to take... well, not this. But it had to work. He had no other hope. Think about snow. Then what? Dammit! His gut was just so ridiculously... Get off me, stop tickling, but right away he knew to his core what was in store tonight. Feel it harder. Just more and more and more tickling. Damn straps. Do something, before the fever makes it impossible to think of anything else. Pain tolerance. Go!
Step... didn't he do step one? Why did these gloves make him just want to scream laughter?
Step one, two... What came after two? Stop laughing, you have to stop feeling the fingers right now. Sure. Okay. Like that was gonna happen. Help, somebody, this is the absolute worst nightmare tickling ever.
Not because it hurt. He was trained to shove pain aside. That actually worked.
This fucker wanted the high-voltage pleasure to level him. For hours. That would allow even more hours of doing this to him. Make sure he couldn't do a mutherfuckin' thing to resist, and that no one would come anywhere close -
No one will know what it's putting him through.
Tune it out, he thought desperately. Gotta do this. You did step one, so now it's step two -
His ribs lit up! Busy hands were kneading, petting, following the length of each rib.
He jerked once and howled.
Maybe that was step two. Feeling the blast of sensation.
"Please," he heard. Over and over. Hoarse.
He opened his eyes.
No one else was there. He was confused for a second.
"D-don't tickle meeeee. Pleeeeeeze." Oh. He was the one talking.
Was that real? No dream could ever be that... consuming.
Maybe his old life had been the dream. The gloves had roamed. Waking up one spot after another. Way too vivid.
This couldn't go on...
How stupid. Of course it would.
The worst possible thing ever - he would rather go through anything else, now - and there was so much more tickling, coming right up. Before he came here, those old nightmares had nothing to do with genuine tickling. What a fool he'd been.
No one would ever believe this. An invisible sadist, finding the perfect house - to not be visited for months and months, so the staff wasn't at risk of any possible watchers outside. Even better, it had been deactivated as a safe-house! Months of food and toys in the kitchen...
Against staggering odds, he'd come here to rest.
A horribly ticklish man.
Magic nonhuman hands didn't ever get tired, did they? When he was finally worn out, the sadist who wore 'em would get everything all ready, so when he woke up - a whole new day full of hardcore fever.
"You gotta understand," he begged, "this is... m-more than I can take..."
There had to be something he could say. Right? Wasn't that how it worked? People just didn't get locked in safehouses and tickled for months. Not fair. The thing he'd had those nightmares about - well, shit, here it was, with a lot more hands at once. Serious about it. Determined.
"Not that, no more, no... aw, no," he wailed.
He couldn't imagine anyone - upline at work, the most mystic or psychic left-wingers he knew, hardcore fundamentalist church types - believing this was possible. Not even the weirdest newsletters he'd found at the work media research section had even hinted at this shit.
Self-preservation, maybe. Ah. Some people - and he was still conflicted too - would see it as being a risk, to the tickler. If they tried to get other victims to speak out. Maybe he'd be warned before it let him go. Interfering with any of its plans, for the next hour, or next year, would be countered...
Endless tickling. As attentive as it could be.
Chasing baddies... that was irrelevant, in a way. Some unseen sadist, who could apparently pull on as many gloves as it wanted, wasn't a "traditional" bad guy. Putting the country at risk was almost always... clearer, more obvious.
Don't mind me, I'm just a spy-level patriot being tickled out of my mind all night. Every night, probably. Nobody else gets to find out.
It drove him absolutely crazy to remember how far away this lonely little house was from the road. He'd worked pretty damn hard - shit, he walked miles - to get here. Instead of relaxing, like he'd planned, he was a highly reactive target for the magic asshole's plans.
A tickler. No, a hardcore tickler. He should've been okay, finally, and instead it was gonna keep on tickling. This had become the worst thing it could possibly do to him.
From the instant he saw that first pair of gloves - floating there, fuckin' empty... magic inexhaustible hands - he knew getting tickled was about to be redefined for him. The house was safe, alright. Locked up. Just the tickler and its prey. No chance whatsoever of him being pulled away from the stroking, roaming, petting, racing hands...
Like those gloves.
He jumped. "No, no, no, noooooo!"
The tickler's fingers were coming back.
Time to wrestle around like a fool. Useless. They didn't have to change course at all. He was staying on the damn bed, and they were going to drive him insane again.
More gloves were showing up this time. Worse than before. Sixteen - no, at least eighteen tireless hands. Except for the restraints, he was naked...
He wailed at them -
All stopped. Except... one. Going down. He cringed, watching that glove.
"Oh no," he begged.
It wouldn't.
"Please. No more."
But the fingers curled slowly around his favorite body part.
The others began to land.
Dammit. Two pair pinned his legs.
"Not my feet," he rasped - and then he was laughing again. Of course, both feet. Wow. Out of my mind, he thought - will creepy sureless, like he would think about his birthdate. Really going out of my mind this time, so the bastard had no resistance whatsoever, no obstacle to stoking up my ticklishness a lot more than last round.
He fought to keep from laughing...nonstop. Unfair - this was way more than the frat boys and that crazy chick dished out.
The gloves kept moving into position.
He roared even harder when they stimulated his armpits and neck and collarbones.
After they got busy, he couldn't laugh at all anymore.
Nonstop flood. Except heavier. Nothing else mattered.
The jackass wore the gloves, and had 'em tickle wherever it wanted.
It had to have known he was forced to live through more sensation every time it started back in... even if it wasn't as obvious that his ability to feel the effects was not any closer to taking in all of the tickling. He felt more and more of it, but the amount being activated all over him was increasing too.
It was way more excitement than he could even start to deal with.
Except for the busy gloves, time just came to a fuckin' halt.
The fingers didn't miss a spot.
Eventually, the pack of gloves tracing around his dick finally let him come.
They let him catch his breath - and started back in. Magnified sensitivity filled him. Everywhere. It felt like two hundred expert hands.
He couldn't do a thing to stop 'em...
Panting.
It had to end... but the gloves would still be there whenever he opened his eyes.
The house was just too perfect. A tickler had moved in, and it had a watched a wildly ticklish guy arrive. Hidden as well as it could wish, and time was not an issue. He had maybe never been in a situation where the idea of an "unlimited" duration was so close to the real deal.
He tried to prepare himself - and looked.
"Oh, nooooo..."
At least twenty-four gloves. Firmed up, mobile - ready to rock his world. Aw hell, was he really gonna get it now, or what?
While they hung over him, flexing slowly or adjusting their location, two bottles of water came - and some familiar packages. Energy bars. He was going to need every calorie before it was done with him.
"Look, I can't... I just can't do this."
A wrapper tore open.
He resisted the food. It followed his head around -
But as soon as fingers laid down in his armpits, he hurried to take the first bite.
It was so macabre. Tickle him for hours, and make him eat. So he could be tickled for more hours! If he fought it, the bastard just had to tickle him until he went along. Fucked no matter what.
There had to be a way out. Something he could do. That was the way he'd been trained. Find a way. This thoroughly entranced lover of tickling had prepared ahead of time, to block every escape possibility or way he could handle the expanding avalanche of neural reactions.
He took a breath, kept chewing, and focused on his pain tolerance anchor. Dammit, there was nothing else he could do. Nice, snowy, quiet, no gloves floating around...
As he swallowed, he took a deep breath. Okay. It was going to work. It just had to work -
Fingers attacked his feet.
Slinging around immediately, he threw his head back and laughed with abandon. How the hell could the power of it keep growing?
So intolerable! He couldn't get any of the cuffs to move at all.
The gloves were racing, digging, clamping on, raking the sides, sliding so heavily all over his feet -
He just went wild.
Arms spread. Plenty of straps. More gloves would move in any second. Complete. unhindered access. They could tickle this hard all over his body and, dammit, he couldn't do a thing... except live through it.
The fingers were gone for now. He knew there was so much more of that to come, though. He was afraid to guess how long it had been since so many gloves started working on him.
A energy bar was waiting. He ate immediately, not wanting to bring the gloves back down yet, so worried about the next bout that it was hard to swallow.
Keeping the prisoner nice and healthy, so he could be tickled again and again.
Perfectly, expertly screwed...
As he finished off the bar, he tried to figure out why he'd apparently been punished with so many tickling hands. It wasn't like he refused to eat...
It didn't click until well into the second liter of water.
He'd been using his tolerance anchor and he guessed the son of a bitch had seen some change - calmer breathing, or maybe less tension in his body? The unimaginably maddening impact that the son of a bitch rubbed into him had been amped up, to keep him from coping with it even the least little bit.
The gloves waited, ready to move in and continue. The sadist wearing them now would work him over again, and again - so very easy to dig in and reduce him to a motionless, suffering bundle of provoked nerves.
It always reined the gloves in when he was starting to faint. Or cough.
As hard as it was to accept, this sorcerer - this master tickler - must be extraordinarily happy with its plaything. Something in the solid, crippling embrace of the gloves...
He'd been so relieved to get here. Thinking about a couple beers, and then bed, kept him moving as he came to the door.
The hunter took notice. He'd even closed the door himself! I'm in here with you... and I'm real ticklish. Was it stunned, for a moment? Ecstatic?
Talk about bad timing...
He was exactly what the bastard was looking for - a guy it could tickle and tickle in the former safehouse, absolutely free of concern. The place was written off, forgotten...
Just perfect.
The asshole's brushes and gloves cruised down to him again.
26jul2010
revised 28oct2023