The little shop in the corner looked almost rundown and abandoned if it wasn’t for the open door and “OPEN” sign next to it. Lea was somewhat confused when she passed it by. The half-Asian goth girl had been a horror junkie for years, and somehow she never knew that there would be a shop like that in the city at all. It looked like something right up her alley!
“Morgana’s Horror Comics and Videos?” Lea whispered the shop’s name out loud, and whispered to herself. “Videos? How do these shops even exist anymore?”
Curious and excited, Lea entered the shop to be greeted by a pale, eerily beautiful redheaded woman behind the counter. The woman smiled. “We don’t get many customers these days. Please, come further inside…”
HORROR OF THE TICKLE TAPES
“Where is Lea?” Marie groaned as she played with her phone. “It is very much unlike her to miss any second of our Halloween sleepovers.” The tanned, curvy brunette was wearing a green cropped t-shirt and light blue denim shorts. She was talking to Jennifer, whose place they were at this year. The girls had all turned eighteen this year, and were committed to continue their childhood tradition of their annual Halloween sleepovers far to the future over parties other teenagers of their age were attending.
“Why don’t you call her rather than just play with your phone?” Jennifer replied. She had black pixie cut hair that really fit her petite appearance, further complemented with her skinny jeans and tight fitting tube top.
“No way, I’m far too busy playing with my phone!” She answered sarcastically. “I just wish we could get started with the movie marathon already.”
The girls had always spent their Halloween sleepovers watching horror films, and along the years, Lea had typically been the one to provide them. The half-Chinese goth girl literally lived and breathed horror media, and had been curator of both excellent and weird movie experiences to her friends.
“She still isn’t here?” Gabriela, the fourth and final member of their friend group wondered as she returned from the kitchen, where she had been preparing their snacks and light refreshments for the nights. Gabriela was a nerdy Hispanic girl, with round face and glasses, curly hair and white crop top with blue baggy jeans. The top had a generous cleavage for her large boobs. “What is taking her so long?”
Finally, soon after that, they heard the doorbell ringing, and opened the door to discover Lea, who was hauling a large box with her. She was panting and sweaty.
“I’m… Sorry for being late…” She swept sweat off her forehead. “This was… Heavier to carry than… Expected…” The skinny goth had never been the athletic sort in the slightest. Her friends helped her by carrying the box inside, and Lea followed, still panting and hoping that she didn’t just ruin her dark makeup. Lea was wearing black leather pants, and a matching black leather top that might as well be called a bikini top, very daring considering how ample her bosom was. It was somewhat covered with a denim jacket outside, which she now flung to the nearby sofa.
“You don’t believe the shop I found yesterday! I just HAD to buy movies of the year from there!” She explained, excited, as Jennifer opened the box and started to browse its contents.
“You brought us… Video tapes?” Jennifer both declared and asked in a bit confused tone, as she lifted multiple tapes from the box. “And you brought a VHS player - how thoughtful of you, but what would have been wrong with DVDs or Blurays?”
“That’s the thing!” Lea replied. “These films don’t exist in any DVD databases! I had never heard of them in my life, but here they are! Those actors too… Complete mystery to me! And the production company, Featherterror Inc. Never heard of that either. Good thing my folks still had the old VHS player in their basement, even if hauling just that thing was the heaviest thing I’ve done in ages!”
Jennifer, Gabriela and Marie started going through the movie tapes, and Marie was the first one to bring up something obvious. “Isn’t there something… Weird with these movies. They all seem to have something to do with…”
“Yea?”
“Tickling!”
Indeed they did. All of the film covers included illustration of something horrifying mercilessly tickle torturing a beautiful, scantily clad woman. From monsters to hillbillies and aliens, all of those movies seemed to be about various monstrosities attacking, kidnapping and tickling helpless damsels in distress in a wide variety of settings.
“They didn’t sell you some weird vintage fetish porn, didn’t they?” Gabriela asked.
“Not at all! The lady running the shop told me these are going to be terrifying! Unique kind of horror! And doesn’t it look like it too? I mean, can you imagine how that would feel?” She takes a tape titled “Tickled to Scream”, where the cover portrays a half-naked blonde tied on a dirty mattress in a concrete room as her belly is mercilessly tickled by a masked assailant in black robes. The face of the blonde lady was drawn very convincingly to portray true horror and agony.
“Well, sure, it looks horrible!” Marie answered. “I would probably die if that was me! But I would also CERTAINLY die if a slasher stabbed me. I don’t know about this tickling themed horror… Is it really going to be that good?”
“Just trust me on this! You know I got a good hunch when it comes to quality horror!”
While Lea’s definition of “quality” could sometimes be debatable when it comes to horror, she had apparently worked hard to make this first sleepover of their early adulthood special, so the girls didn’t push their concerns further and decided to just go ahead with it. Within an hour, they were ready to begin, and had picked four movies to watch this year.
The Tickle-Mutants of the Torment Apocalypse
It was a dramatic tale of Earth after cataclysmic event, where most of humanity had mutated into tickle-mutants who relentlessly chased and tickle tortured women left on Earth.
The Grand Abbess of Feathers: Inquisitoress
A chilling film that portrayed an inquisition ran by an order of nuns, which tormented innocent peasant girls into confessions of witchcraft that just kept bringing new victims to their torture dungeons.
The Laughing Experiments of Dr. Agonya
A movie telling a story of mad woman doctor, who kidnapped nubile girls for her inhumane tickle torture experiments.
Ten-tickling Tickle Monster
Cheesiest of the bunch, where an invincible alien tickle monster attacked a beach full of bikini-clad women.
After the four-movie marathon was over, all of the girls were left weirdly shaken. “Those were - more intense than I expected.” Gabriela said.
“Yeah.” Marie nodded. “I mean, they were pretty campy and dumb for the most part, but my god, all those scenes where women were being tickle tortured… Those actresses were so convincing! Like they were really suffering genuine torture!”
“Got to compliment them for that.” Jennifer joined in. “I wonder how they did it - there is no way that ticklish women could stand being tickled like that. Also, the damsels screaming for help.. Were they breaking the fourth wall intentionally? It was like they were screaming for someone to save them for real and begging for mercy not only from the villains, but something else…”
“You’re just overthinking it!” Lea said and waved her hand. “You’re all just so ticklish you let it get under your skin.” She got up from the sofa to remove the last tape. “Can’t blame you for that though, those tickling scenes looked TERRIBLE! Now, I’m not sleepy yet, how about we play board games or something before we- do you hear that girls?”
They all went quiet, and there was no mistake about it - they heard faint laughter. Coming from the house.
“What is that?” Marie asked Jennifer, who shook her head. “I - I don’t know.” She whispered. “Be quiet! There should not be anyone but us in the house!”
The laughing voice was not relenting.
“What do we do? Will we call cops?” Stuttering Marie asked, but Gabriella seemed more annoyed than anything.
“This is just some of your bullshit, isn’t it Lea? Did you put a speaker with a recording there when you went to bathroom?”
“I didn’t I swear!”, unnerved Lea whispered.
“Nonsense.” Gabriela said and sighed. “I’ll go turn it off. Nice try, prankster.”
“Gab wait!” Lea said, and looked at Jennifer and Marie. “I didn’t do a thing! It wasn’t me!”
Gabriela already walked towards the laughter, and Marie and Jennifer, not sure how to react, followed together with Lea, but not before Jennifer grabbed a baseball bat, just in case of a hostile intruder. They got to the door behind which the laughter was coming, and Gabriela took one last look to Lea.
“This is not funny. After all those tickling horror movies, someone as ticklish as me could have thought that- EEEK!”
She has no time to finish, as the door suddenly opens and she is pulled inside by hands emerging from darkness, those arms clearly covered by a nun’s habit. The horrified girls look as screaming Gabriela is pulled inside, and the inquisitoress Abbess, villainess of the film they watched, comes to the door, staring at the girls as she shouts her catchphrase from the movie: “MAKE THE WITCH LAUGH!” the Abbess closes the door, and laughing sounds that could have previously been heard from behind the door ceased. Jennifer, worried for her friend, rushed to help her friend.
“GAAAB!” She yelled as she opened the door, ready to hit the villains with her bat, but she saw only the guest bedroom. No evil nuns. No Abbess. No Gabriel.
“Lea - what is going on? Those - those were just movies!” Marie says, stuttering. Lea is at loss for words.
“I - I don’t know! I don’t know! They are SUPPOSED to be just movies! This is crazy!”
The girls run back to the living room, where Jennifer grabs her mobile phone and at lack of better solutions, tries to call the police, only for the phone to not work - instead, she can hear voice of one of the tickle-mutants from the first movie of the night. “Is it sensitive flesh? It is! New ticklish flesh! We are gonna get ya! We are gon-” She closed the phone, turning pale.
“L-lea those movies, there is something strange about them.” As they returned to the tapes, Marie shrieked.
“L-look!” The cover illustration in “The Grand Abbess of Feathers: Inquisitoress” had changed. It previously had a picture of a dark skinned lady locked in stocks and getting her soles tickled by the fingernails of nuns, but now it was extremely realistic illustration of Gabriela, topless, stretched on a torture rack, getting her tits mercilessly tickled by the Abbess herself, wielding two devious feather dusters.
With shaky hands, Lea puts the tape back into the VHS player, thinking “this can’t be real, it can’t be real, it can’t”, but as soon as she puts it in, the tape starts playing by itself, showing them a new scene that didn’t exist before. It shows Gabriela, her upper body stripped and lower body dressed in torn medieval rags, being bound on the rack and the Abbess tickling her tits like in the VHS cover.
“AHAHAHHAH, NOHOHOO, I AM NOT A WITCH, AHAHAHAA!” Gabriela screams, “NOHOT THEHEERE, I CAAHAAAN’T!”
“Silence witch! Only laughter and confessions are allowed in my dungeons!” The Abbess answers, twirling the feather dusters on poor girl’s tits, tickling their sides and underboobs, and making sure that her nipples are always being embraced by the feathery touch. “Come, make her truly suffer!”
Three more nuns enter the torture chamber with their own feather dusters, two of them take their places by poor Gabriela’s sides and start sweeping her midriff and armpits all over with the cruel feathers, driving Gabriela nuts with laughter and squirming. The third nun elegantly moves her ragged loincloth to have space to start feathering Gabriela’s crotch and inned thighs.
“NAHAHAAA, NOHOHO MOOOREEEE, I AAHAM A WIHIHIIITCH!” Gabriela is screaming in ticklish terror. Her friends watch helplessly, as Gabriela keeps being tickled, and in addition to all the other horrifying absurdity of the situation, she also seems to be absorbed into the universe of the film, like she really was a poor peasant girl captured by inquisition.
“And witches must be punished. By TICKLING THEIR BODIES FOREVER!”
“NOOOOO! AHAHAHAAAAAA!”
Gabriela’s scene fades to black, but the girls get a terrible hunch that her supernatural peril isn’t actually over. The tape is spit out of the player, and upon further inspection of the tabe cover, Gabriela’s name has also been mysteriously added to the actresses of the film.
“What… What are we going to do?” Panicking Marie asked. “Oh my god, what are we going to do! We gotta get her out of there”
“Th-the shop! If we get back there, we must find answers!” Lea concludes, and the girls swiftly prepare to leave, except Jennifer, who is thinking of the menacing tickle-mutant voice in her phone.
“Wait girls, something is not right! We should be care-”
Before she finishes her words, Marie already goes for the door. As she opens it, it is somehow daytime outside, and suddenly, tentacles emerge and wrap around screaming Marie.
“NOOO! HELP ME! HELP ME! HEEELP-” Marie is pulled outside, and Lea closes the door after Jennifer has fought off other tentacles.
“Y-yeah, let’s not go outside!” Lea says.
They return to investigate the tapes, fearing the worst, and they are correct - “Ten-tickling Tickle Monster”, the movie of alien tickle monstrosity with ten terrible tentacles, had changed. Instead of buxom blonde twins being tickled in the cover, it was now Marie, four tentacles holding her limbs and the rest of them tickling her all over. The girls didn’t even want to check the tape, but suddenly, the VHS package opened, and the tape just floated into the player by itself. The girls jumped back with a frightened yelp, and despite their fear, got their eyes glued to the movie, which again had a new scene.
Marie was on the beach, wearing a green bikini, trying to run from the monster, but was inevitably captured. She was pinned down on the sands, face down, and the monster started tickling her all over her sides.
“AHAHIHIHIHIII, NOHOHOOO, SAHAHAAVE MEEEE!” Marie screamed, with a closeup on her teary face, and as the camera moved along her body, it showed tentacles tickling her ribs and sideboobs, sides and ribs, and two more focusing on tickling her buttocks and hips after removing her bikini bottom. After several minutes of this torture, it flipped Marie around to rip of her top too, leaving her naked and her tits vulnerable as well. Marie was lifted midair, and the creature now only used two tentacles to tie her, wrapping her wrists and ankles together. Rest of the four tentacles tickled her relentlessly from waist to tops of her nipples, with special focus on her shapely butt and her shaking tits.
“AAHAHAHHAAA, HEEHEELP, IT IS KIHIHILLINH MEEEHEEE!” Marie screamed in laughter, but trapped in the movie, she would be unfortunately stuck in this peril - nobody was killed in these tickling horror movies, a fact that started to dawn as very sinister to Lea and Jennifer. As if to confirm these looming worries as they entered the mind of spectators, the movie rewinded a bit by itself, and the replay of the scene was different, with Marie now getting buried to the sand and two tentacles stroking her soles while rest of monster’s tentacles went after other beachgoing girls.
It had to be verified. Jennifer took the tape out and put the Inquisitoress movie back in, and the scene with Gabriela was different too. Now she was chained against the wall by side of another girl, a tall redhead, and both of them had a nun in front of them tormenting their ticklish ribs with torture instruments resembling wooden back scratchers.
Jennifer had seen enough. She pulled the tape out. “Do you get it?” She asks Lea. “These tapes are evil! They are trapping their watchers inside never ending ticklish nightmares! We must destroy them!”
“But what will happen to Marie and Gab if we-” Lea tries to object.
“I don’t know!” Jennifer replied. “But anything is better than that! I will not be trapped in one of those! I WILL NOT!” She was getting frantic with fear, remembering a scene from the tickle-mutant movie that had made her stomach turn. In it, a young Asian damsel had been captured by a group of tickle mutants that called themselves the “Pit Gang” and subjected the girl to ruthless armpit tickling of five minutes straight before transition to next torture scene. Just the thought of ending up like that made her feel faint with terror.
“Quick, we need to go to the basement! Throw all of these to the furnace!” With shaky hands, Jennifer threw the tapes back to the box, and went down to the basement with Lea. The old boiler was there, and both girls scrambled for fuel to light it up, breaking down old chairs.
“Okay. Okay. Let’s throw these in. Then light it. We got to…” As Jennifer opened the hatch of the furnace, a strong, greenish hand lunged out and grabbed her wrist. She heard the voice of a tickle-mutant from inside the furnace.
“WE GOT FRESH FLESH! TICKLISH FLESH FOR THE PIT GANG!”
“No, NOO! LEA, HELP! HELP ME, DON’T LET THEM TAKE ME, PLEASE, PLEEAS-”
Jennifer was pulled inside the cold furnace, and before Lea could make it to help her friend, she was already gone, vanished to thin air. Lea turned back to the box with cursed tickle horror videos, but to her shock, it was gone. It was soon apparent where. Lea heard faint sounds of laughter from upstairs. Jennifer’s laughter. “The Tickle-Mutants of the Torment Apocalypse” had found its way back to the VHS player.
Her knees shaking, Lea walked back upstairs, and saw her friend being tickle tortured on the TV screen. Jennifer in the movie was wearing a similar tube top she had earlier, that left her armpits completely vulnerable. They indeed were as vulnerable as they can be in Jennifer’s movie predicament as well. She was tied on a pole, her arms tied over her head, with her wrists bound together and additional rope tying her elbows, making her underarms even more helpless tickle targets. She was laughing beyond hysteria already, even though the scene had not been going on for five minutes. She was surrounded by creepy tickle-mutants of the Pit Gang, that were gleeful beyond overjoyed watching a torture show in front of her. One of the female mutants was behind the pole, tickling poor Jennifer’s armpits by just kneading them with her thumbs, and Jennifer was in agony.
“AHIHIHIII, HIHIHIHIII, AHAHA NOOO, NOT THIS, NOT THEHEHEER, ANYTHING BUT THIHIIIS, STOOOOOP!” She screamed, but received no pity from the tickle-crazed fiends.
As the scene dragged on, mutants would switch ticklers, and each just seemed to make Jennifer’s armpit tickling predicament worse and worse. Adding fingers. Using makeshift tickle tools. Trying to fit wild fingers of multiple ticklers to torment her underarms. Lea knew that Jennifer would have quickly passed out of she really laughed so much in real life, but the movie scenes demanded torture for the damsel. And Jennifer, forced to play the part, was compelled to endure it all.
Before the scene was even concluded, Lea went to look for the baseball bat Jennifer had previously armed herself with. She would smash those tapes. No time to try burning them! The young goth chick found it leaning to the door that led to the basement, and took it, but as she returned, the living room was different. It had transformed into a laboratory straight out of “The Laughing Experiments of Dr. Agonya”. Chill ran down Lea’s spine, and she noticed she wasn’t wearing her leathery outfit anymore. She was clad in a sexualized cheerleader outfit, holding a crowbar instead of a baseball bat. The film had featured perhaps the most sadistic tickle torture scenes of all, where the dark haired, fair skinned, beautiful and cruel Dr. Agonya had utilized every last bit of her sick imagination to make her teenager victims truly suffer.
“How adorable. New subject walks to my lair in attempt to save her cheer squad friends…” She heard a sultry woman’s voice behind her, and turned around. Lea tried to speak her mind to Dr. Agonya, but despite still owning her mind, she came to realize she is not in control of her words anymore.
“You monster! I have seen your infernal torture machines and girls you lock in them! I will not let you get away with it!”
Lea could not believe it. It was like she was talking cheesy b-horror film lines compelled by some powerful force.
“Silly girl. There is nothing but torment and suffering for ticklish girls of the world! YOU INCLUDED!” Dr. Agonya’s ticklebots swarmed into the room and Lea tried to fight them off, but just like other girls in the movie, she was overwhelmed by their metal tendrils, and tickled to submission. Tickle torture went on until she felt she is going to faint, but instead of that, with a flash of light, she found herself in another scene. She was now bound on an experiment table, and tickled by Dr. Agonya herself, who tormented her naked body with a glowing, mechanical feather.
“AAHAHAHHAHAA, NOHOHO, MERCY, MEHEHERCYYY!” Lea laughed, losing her words to hysteria as the feather reached her belly button. She was still conscious of being inside a cursed film, conscious of being trapped in this otherworldly nightmare, but only genuine words of hers that would come out were her laughter and begging. All other attempts of talking were met with horror dialog being inserted in her mouth, whatever was appropriate to the scene of torture she was suffering through. She remembered that technologically enhanced feather in a future scene where two of them were being used on her nipples, as she was tied side by side with her entire supposed cheerleader squad. She remembered them in a scene where she played a kidnapped model who had them pressed against her toetied soles for hours. The scenes culminating in tickle torture and pure terror followed each other, and Lea could see the horror she felt being reflected in eyes of other victims she was often tickle tortured alongside of, both by Dr. Agonya herself or her ticklebots and devious machines, feeling like her perils and tortures go on forever. Forever. And ever. And ever…
*
Early hours of next morning…
The door to Jennifer’s house was opened, and a pale woman slowly walked in. Morgana. the lady from the shop, gracefully stepped in, satisfied with quiet emptiness within. “The girl told me she would be having friends…” She thought to herself. “How wonderful.” She walked in front of the TV, and packed the movies back into the box, admiring their new covers. Jennifer and Lea were now starring in their movies as well. Jennifer as a topless young woman tied on a T-shaped torture frame, tickle-mutants spinning crude, fuzzy tickle-dusters in her armpits. Lea as a naked damsel strapped into one of Dr. Agonya’s torture chairs, with mechanical hands tickling her body all over as the sadistic doctor herself used tickle-gloves with vibrating tips to tickle her stocked and toetied feet. Morgana collected her VHS tapes and walked out of the empty house, eager to see what kind of torments these four hyper-ticklish souls would be going through in her cursed video tapes alongside all the other souls of ticklish and damned girls who had rented them across the decades. The video tapes were only vessels for their torments, which were always ongoing regardless whether or not someone was actually watching them.
“A shame that teens these days don’t really do VHS rentals anymore…” She thought to herself as she walked towards her shop, eager to savor the new ticklish tortures her eternally ensnared victims would be suffering in the pocket dimensions of tickle hell this demoness going by the name Morgana in her human form had deviced decades ago after falling in love with the scary movies humans make. As sweet and evergreen as her collection is, she had started to crave for fresh suffering. Back in the good old days she used to have lots of new ticklish girls captured annually. “Maybe I should be getting on with the times… Start a streaming service or something…”
THE END
