By Keith Steeclif
Jody woke up slowly. His head was in a fog. He remembered leaving the bar, and two handsome strangers coming up to him, but then his mind went blank.
Jody tried to sit up, but he realized he couldn’t move his arms. Opening his eyes, he immediately noticed that the entire room: ceiling, floor, and walls, was padded. Not only that, but Jody was in a straightjacket. He fought to get free of the contraption, but to no avail.
Panicked, Jody tried to access his situation. He could feel the hard canvas of the straightjacket, so he realized that his shirt had been removed. His shoes and socks were gone too, but he still had his pants on.
Suddenly, the tiny door opened up and the two men from the previous night walked in. They were both wearing white lab coats.
“What the hell is going on?” Jody yelled.
The two men ignored his words. They came up to Jody and grabbed him by the ankles. Lifting his legs, Jody was on his back, and the men wrapped their muscular arms around Jody’s calves. Then they started to rake their fingernails up and down the soles of Jody’s bare feet.
Jody had always been extremely ticklish. Despite his fear, he burst out laughing, squirming around and trying to kick free of their firm grips. But the two men held on and tickled Jody’s feet for a minute or two. Jody was hysterical within seconds.
The two men looked at each other and grinned. Then they let Jody go and, without a word, left the room and shut the door behind them.
Jody was even more confused than ever. What was he doing here? And why did those men tickle his feet like that? Most of Jody’s boyfriends, when they found out how ticklish he was, used to tickle him all the time, so he was used to getting tickled real good. But these two guys were up to something, and it made Jody very nervous.
About an hour later the two men returned. Again they didn’t speak, but they grabbed Jody and pulled him to his feet. With one man on either side, they led him out of the room. Jody tried to ask again what was going on, but the men completely ignored him. They led him down a dimly lit hallway to an open door at the end. Inside, they made Jody sit down in a large, high-backed chair. It reminded Jody of a Dentist chair.
Then the men pulled a wooden box in front of the chair. It was high, and slanted steeply upward. Lifting Jody’s legs, they set them on top of the padded box and then securely lashed his legs to the box from ankle to hip.
Jody pleaded with the men, asking them to explain what was going on, but they continued to ignore him. Once they were done, Jody was straightjacketed and lashed from ankle to neck. He could barely move a muscle. Then one of the men took a canister and sprinkled the contents of it on the soles of Jody’s feet. It was a gray powder. The man covered his soles and toes with the stuff and then the two men left the room.
Jody tried to struggle, but in short time he realized that he was completely immobile. Then he felt a tingling on his feet. His soles started to itch. The itching increased. Jody tried to rub his feet together, but the men had lashed them just far enough apart so they couldn’t touch. The itching was becoming unbearable.
After what seemed like an eternity, the door opened and another man came into the room. He was tall and very handsome. His hair was black and his skin was darkly tanned, much like Jody. He too wore a white lab coat.
“Hello,” he said with a smile, “My name is Dr. Babinski and I am going to be conducting your examination today.”
“Examination?” Jody asked, “Examination for what? What am I doing here?”
“Oh come now, Mr. Tucker, you know full well why you are here.”
“Mr. Miller? That’s not my name. My name is Miller, Jody Miller.”
“Oh, we’ve got a new name this week, do we? Okay, Mr. Miller, let’s get started shall we?”
Jody wanted to explain his situation to the man, but the itching of his feet was maddening.
“Please,” Jody said, “could you scratch my feet.”
“Of course, Mr. Tucker….I mean Miller. Of course.” The doctor pulled a small recorder out of his pocket, turned it on, and placed it on the table nearby.
“The patient,” he spoke to the recorder, “Is again requesting that I scratch his feet.”
Doctor Babinski pulled a rolling stool up to the soles of Jody’s feet and sat down. He then started to slowly scratch up and down Jody’s bare soles.
Jody was laughing instantly, but the sensation was so wonderful. The itching was more compelling than the tickling and, although Jody was hysterical with laughter, he encouraged the doctor to continue.
The doctor scratched all along Jody’s soles, and up to his toes. Jody’s feet wiggled wildly and his head bobbed up and down (the only two parts of his body that could move) as he laughed hysterically. The doctor continued the scratching.
“Is this what you want, Jody,” the doctor asked.
“Yes, thank you,” Jody managed to say between bouts of laughter.
Dr. Babinski started scratching more lightly with his fingernails. The itching was starting to subside, and this new touch was more tickling than scratching. Jody started laughing even louder.
“The patient,” the doctor spoke into the recorder. He had to speak loudly to be heard over Jody’s hysterical laughter, “Seems to have an insatiable craving for tickling. Despite the fact that he is quite hysterical, and obviously distressed by my tickling, he begs for more.”
Jody tried to correct the doctor. To explain about the powder, but he was laughing too hard to speak. The itching was gone now, and the tickling was driving him crazy. Only one time did Jody ever remember getting tickled this long before. He’d let one of his boyfriends tie him up once to add a little spice to their sex. But once he was bound, his boyfriend tickled his feet to make sure Jody couldn’t escape.
But that was different. That was his boyfriend. This was a stranger. A stranger with long fingernails.
Jody was too hysterical to beg for mercy. He was laughing too hard to do anything but pant and gasp for breath between bouts of maniacal laughter. This man was a very good tickler, and he was exploiting Jody’s ticklish feet to the absolute limit.
Finally, mercifully, the man stopped. As Jody gulped in large swallows of air, the doctor picked up his recorder and spoke, “Subject, although extremely ticklish, seems to have a very high endurance. I have been tickling his feet for thirty minutes. While the subject is short of breath, he appears capable of withstanding much more. I will now test his response to stimuli other than fingers.”
Jody looked down at the doctor sitting in front of his defenseless bare feet. From the table, he picked up a stiff feather and brought it toward Jody’s soles.
“Please, no,” was all that Jody managed to say before the feather started to glide down the center of his right foot. His soles, still tingling from the earlier tickling, responded immediately. Jody was again racked with uncontrollable laughter.
The doctor seemed to take great pleasure in tickling Jody’s feet. He brushed the feather all across his soles and toes, linger on any spot when Jody seemed extra sensitive. Jody’s ribs were sore from the laughing and tears were rolling down his cheeks as the doctor tickled and tickled his helpless bare feet.
Jody lost all sense of time. In fact, he was completely lost, and didn’t even realize right away that the doctor had stopped his tickling. As he slowly recovered, the doctor just sat and watched him intently.
Finally, the doctor picked up his recorder once more and said, “Mr. Miller has proven to be the most ticklish subject tested so far. After a brief rest period, I will endeavor to test the ticklishness of his upper body.”
The doctor then tucked the recorder into his pocket and stood.
“The attendants will return shortly to prepare you for the next part of your examination. In the meantime, let me put on the television to keep you company.
There was a TV on a bracket in the corner of the room near the ceiling. The doctor turned it on and left the room.
Jody was panting, not paying attention to the newscast that was being broadcast. Then, something caught his attention. It was a newscaster reporting live from outside some large institution.
“It seems,” the reporter was saying, “That several patients escaped sometime last evening. They managed to imprison the night crew. Apparently, there are reports of some patients actually leaving the grounds and kidnapping local residents. It was not until the day crew tried to report to work this morning that the takeover was discovered.”
Suddenly, Jody heard laughter erupt from down the hall.
“While reports are still sketchy,” the reporter continued, “It appears that all the people who have been abducted have been men in their mid to late twenties. At this point, we do not know where the victims are or how they are being treated. Police on the scene fear that, given the fact that this is a maximum-security facility for the criminally insane, that this siege could last for several days.”
The two attendants came into the room. One said, “Well, Mr. Miller, I guess we get to take that nasty straightjacket off of you know. And while we’re waiting for the doctor to return, let’s see just how ticklish you really are.”
As the two men approached, Jody’s heart sank. Sure he’d been tickled a lot in the past, but he had no idea how long he could endure. But by the looks on the faces of these two guys, he was about to find out.