Hey Everyone!
I’ve been writing a long time but haven’t ever shared anything. This is the first installment of a Tickle Saga I’ve been working on. Hope you like it!
THE AWAKENING OF ALEX ODD: A Romance
Chapter 1
There was nothing particular about Alex Odd. But then nothing particular ever came out of Middletown, Indiana. It looked for a while that Mick Bradley would carry the Mudhawks to glory and a state title until a lineman named Gruber sat on his knee and that was that. And Alex Odd was fine with that. It was why she moved home after college. In fact, the apartment she rented was down the street from the kindergarten where she was once a student. In fact, it was the kindergarten where she now taught.
It was barely October, but already the elms were yellowing. As she walked, she thought about Halloween and for some reason it didn’t fill her with the usual dread…twenty five-year-olds in sheets zooming around high on corn syrup, enough decorations to fill a garbage barge, and the seethe of parents with chemical smiles, pretending not to resent the effort everyone else put into the costume parade.
Martin lived in his parents’ basement. Well now, just his mom’s basement; his dad had died when she was in college, and Martin, in a perpetual state of “figuring it out,” had just stayed. She and Martin had a standing thing on Friday nights. She brought pizza, he provided weed, and they’d zone out to some random record or movie or they’d pretend to solve the problems of the world.
When she walked in, the TV was already on. She set the large pie down on the coffee table, slipped off her shoes, and plopped down on the couch. Martin didn’t look at her.
“I see you started without me,” Alex said.
“I can’t stop watching this,” Martin said, without looking at her.
She looked at the screen. It was Disney’s The Jungle Book.
“You know, I’ve never seen this movie,” she said.
“I hadn’t either. But you gotta watch this.”
“Isn’t this super old?”
“Are you aware of the fucked up torture Disney put in its old movies?”
Martin sent the video back a minute and pressed play.
“Watch,” he said.
Later, Alex would refer to this moment as her origin myth, her “radioactive spider bite.” Her eyes grew wide as the temple crumbled and an orangutan, while trying in vain to hold up the pillars, was mercilessly tickled under his arms. The television slowly telescoped toward her. Her legs went numb. She heard her heart beating in her ears, so hard she thought her chest would explode. Martin was talking to her but she couldn’t hear him at all.
“Alex. Alex. Yo! Alex!”
“Sorry. Sorry. What?” She didn’t know why but she was suddenly so embarrassed she could hardly breathe.
“Are you alright?” Martin said.
“Yeah! Yes. Why?”
“You were like…out for a second there.”
“Yeah, sorry – long day. That’s crazy. Wanna eat pizza?” She was desperate to change the subject. Martin wouldn’t let her.
“Can you imagine this shit? Like in real life? I mean really imagine it.”
She was imagining it vividly. “Martin, you’re high.”
“Yeah but…okay try me.”
“What?!”
“I’m gonna hold this pizza up,” he grabbed the pizza, “and you…you know…tickle me.”
The word bothered her to an unreasonable degree. She looked at her friend, no hoisting a pizza box over his head.
“I’m not doing that,” she said.
“Do it! I want to experience this.”
“You’re so weird, “ she said, and poked him in the ribs. He flinched.
“No no, you have to really go for it,” he said. “Come on, just do it.”
She shook her head, brought her hands up, and dug into his armpits.
“Whaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!” he screamed. He kept them there for about five seconds while Alex wriggled her fingers before his arms and the pizza slammed down onto his lap. “That is fucking TERRIBLE!” he said, cracking up. “Fuck!”
“Why did you want that?” she said, opening the pizza box.
“It just seemed insane to me!” he said. “Okay, your turn.”
She blinked at him. Inside, she was on fire and couldn’t say why. “Not a chance.”
“Come on, you did me, now I get to do you.”
“If I do this, can we just eat pizza and watch something else?”
“Yes, just do it.”
She rolled her eyes and lifted her arms above her head. “This is unfair, you had sleeves.”
“I’ll go easy.”
She didn’t know how much time passed between when Martin’s hands made contact with her skin when she finally brought them down. When she did, Martin was sitting with his arms at his side, staring at her.
“Dude, what the hell,” he said.
She realized her arms were still over her head and she slowly dropped them to her lap.
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah, why?”
“How did you do that? I mean, you were going insane for like a minute straight.”
Could it really have been a minute? Alex’s face flushed. “Oh weird! It didn’t feel long to me. Whatever, let’s watch something else.”
“You held your arms up the whole time!” Martin wouldn’t drop it. “You were laughing so hard – I’ve never seen you like that.”
Alex tried to make a joke – something about needing a release after a long week of tiny children, but later, she couldn’t recall a single thing that happened in Martin’s basement after that.
Later, in her kitchen, she stood wide-eyed against the door. Everything looked different and she was afraid to turn the lights on. Instead, she dropped her bag, walked into her bedroom, and fell backwards into the unmade duvet.
“What in the whole entire fuck,” she said. She lifted her left arm and felt with her right hand, the stippled skin of her armpit. She shuddered at the memory. She felt a sharp twinge and realized she had a scratch from Martin’s clumsy hands. She reached under the nightstand for her laptop. The curser blinked at her.
“Just look,” she said out loud, and typed ‘tickle torture,’ into the searchbar. Just seeing the words made her shiver. It was the middle of the night before she knew it. As the pages flew past, she sought more and more, finally finding a video clip in which young woman, not dissimilar to herself, was restrained on a bed not dissimilar to hers, wearing only a pair of panties she herself could imagine wearing. For six glorious, excruciating minutes, a man and two women used every ounce of their energy to drive this poor woman to insanity by tickling every inch of her nearly naked body. There was no part of it Alex didn’t find intoxicating. Indeed, she wondered if Martin’s weed was hitting her harder than usual. The exposed skin, the attention from the three torturers, the pleas for mercy. She repeated one of the victim’s cries quietly to herself: “I can’t take it.” She watched it again and again. She slowed it down and watched it in slow motion. She watched with and without sound. There was a particular moment when the camera zoomed in until the whole shot was occupied by this woman’s stretched upper side. One of the men was standing above her, between her outstretched arms, and with methodical, surgical precision, was sliding the dull edge of him middle finger between her top rib and the curve of her breast. Alex enlarged the video to its limit and slowed it down. Waves appeared in the skin.
Her body flashed red-hot. She tore off her tanktop, threw open her nightstand drawer, and pulled her vibrator from its hiding place under her travel journal from college.
Rather than play the video again, she laid back on the bed and closed her eyes. She put the magic wand next to her and raised her arms over her head. With her right hand, she traced a line from her raised left elbow, down her armpit, to the top of her bra. Frustrated, she sat up, unclasped it, and laid back down. Picking up where she left off, her hand moved down her side, so lightly, goosebumps erupted in a tidal wave across her torso. She let out a sound somewhere between a whimper and a moan. She pictured a figure standing over her, staring lovingly at the smallest part of her…the curve of her belly, maybe. Or the freckle near her right collarbone. As her hand continued south, she pictured the figure leaning forward and raising a hand and her body arched at the exhilaration and terror of the absolute certainty she was about to be picked to pieces.
She sat up. Her hand instinctively jerked away, but she felt the feeling of it linger on its last spot like a phantom limb. Her index finger had only just touched the hollow between her hip joint and her pelvis. She had imagined, at each new location, the figure bearing down – digging and raking and flicking across. But the sensation of her own hand on her hip was a shock. She couldn’t imagine this feeling. The area, even to her own touch, was so sensitive, that the thought of having those nerves deliberately and repeatedly assaulted was overpowering almost to the point of horror. She was suddenly cold. She wrapped her duvet around her and laid back down. She turned on her side and started the video again.
She lost count of the number of times she came. With one hand she held her vibrator in place while with the other, she stroked the bottom of her bare food or traced a circle around her navel, or just stared dry-eyed at the woman on the screen and listened to her desperate hysteria, wishing she was the sweating, screaming mess on the table beneath the ravenous gazes of those tormentors.
She woke up late. As she gazed at the ceiling, now streaked with the shadow of the blinds, Alex felt her chest tighten. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye to her ear and she bit the inside of her cheek. She stood up and looked in the mirror. This body she had looked at thousand of times but had never seen. All of this beautiful body she had! Once, in college, she took a class called “philosophy of the self,” and in a misguided attempt to connect with a generation rapidly accelerating from the nuts and bolts of traditional western philosophy, had asked the class to describe themselves in one word. Alex chose “fine.” She thought this sincerely, it wasn’t a cop out. She didn’t hate herself – she even thought she was occasionally pretty. She wasn’t very tall, and she wasn’t particularly athletic. She wasn’t particularly thin or particularly curvy. Her hair was neither a rich brown nor a yellow blond, but somewhere in the middle. And for most of her life, she’d been okay with that. But looking at herself now, she didn’t only see her body, she felt it. She had never noticed her thighs before. She didn’t hate them, but they held no interest. They were just there. But as she looked at them now, she noticed each muscle and ligament, each little curve and gradation. Her belly, which had held no particular place in her esteem, now looked sumptuous – a cornucopia of nerve endings and tiny hair follicles. There was so much sensation in every inch of her. It was an extraordinary reflection she saw in the mirror – a stranger.
She showered and dressed slowly, enjoying the water and fabric on her skin. Her yogurt, the same 2% Greek-style she’d had for the last week, tasted like a feast. Each berry she plopped on top made her positively giddy, and the sunshine streaming through the kitchen window was so inviting, she decided to walk to the gourmet grocery almost a mile away rather than her usual Food Town across the street. The jangle of her keys delighted her, the gentle thud of the door elicited a smile, and the brightness of the Saturday morning sun nearly made her weep for joy.
The bang against her heel didn’t hurt as much as it surprised her.
“Oh!” She said loudly as she turned to find a grinning child barely taller than the shopping cart he’d been riding headlong down the cereal aisle. ”Oops!” She said to him – “are you here with someone?” kindergarten teacher mode kicking in.
“Oliver!” A voice called from behind the oatmeal. “I asked you to stay where I could see you!” Alex had registered it was a posh British accent by the time a tall, impossibly well-dressed man stepped out from around the end-display. He stopped and cocked his head at the boy. “We don’t ride the carts, right?”
He was long and thin – she guessed he was around 50. Salt and pepper hair fell over an intelligent brow and his suit looked like it was made for him. She didn’t realize she was staring until she looked at his face again and saw he was no longer paying attention to the boy and was looking at her inquisitively.
“Hello.” She said, too loudly. For a minute he said nothing, but seemed to recover himself quickly.
“Hello there. I’m sorry if he’s disturbed you.”
“Not at all. We were just getting to know each other.”
“This is my son, Oliver. Can you say hello?”
“Hi,” Oliver said.”
“Nice to meet you, Oliver, I’m Alex.”
“I’m Oliver,” said Oliver.
“My name is Carey.” He had stepped closer and had reached out his hand to shake hers. His fingers were so long, when Alex extended her hand, it disappeared into his.
“Nice to meet you,” she half-whispered.
“I’m sorry again about –“ Carey gestured toward his son who had removed all the rice crispy boxes from the shelf and was stacking them in the middle of the aisle. “I had a last-minute trip and his mother couldn’t take him so…here we are.” He looked down. “Your heel is bleeding.”
She hasn’t noticed but there was a small trail of blood down the back of her heel where Oliver had rammed her with the cart.
“Is that from him?”
“Oh, it’s totally fine, I barely noticed actually.” Before she knew what was happening, he had grabbed her wrist in one hand and Oliver’s in the other and was ushering them through the store. At the pharmacy, he grabbed bandaids (plasters he called them) and antiseptic wipes. He grabbed a roll of paper towels and guided her to sit on them.
“May I?” he said.
“It’s really not –“ but before she could finish, he had slipped off her flip-flop and was examining the cut on her heel. His fingers, soft and warm, were the length of her foot, almost exactly. Her heart was beating out of its chest but it’d you’d asked her, she wouldn’t have been able to say why.
“This might sting a bit,” he said and he smoothed the wipe over her heel.
“Ooh.” She grunted and instinctively reached up with her arm and grabbed the shelf behind her.
“Sorry sorry sorry, all done,” he said gently. The bandaid folded over the back of her ankle and he looked up at her. She noticed his eye clock her raised arm and lowered it self-consciously. “Good as new.”
“Thank you,” said Alex. “That was very kind.”
“The least I could have done. I’m fact,” he glanced at his watch, “let me make it up to you properly. Are you free tonight? Around 6?” She looked in his eyes. His calmness disarmed her.
“Um. Why? I mean…for what?”
“Dinner.” He helped her stand. “I won’t take no for an answer. Where’s good around here?”
“There’s a pub by the mall. I mean it isn’t fancy but –“
“It sounds perfect.”
“I’ll see you at 6?”
“I guess, yes.”
“Great. Say bye bye Oliver.”
“Bye,” said the boy.
“Please come,” Carey smiled as he took Oliver’s hand. Alex nodded and watched them walk down the aisle and out of the store.
She stood for a moment just blinking. Her basket was still by the cereal. In a daze she finished her shopping and walked home, trying to decide if she should join this man for dinner at The Jolly Miller, Middletown’s attempt at an English pub. Later she’d have little memory of the hours between the grocery story and the pub.
What she did remember was in front of a mirror trying to decide what to wear. She had never obsessed about clothes. Even on dates, she was pretty unconcerned and generally wore the same few dresses on a rotation. But tonight, she agonized. Her body, now suddenly revealed to her by the previous night’s revelations, felt constrained by her normal clothes. She closed her eyes and imagined herself the way she wanted to feel. Then without looking at her reflection, she dressed, grabbed her things, and walked out the door.
He was sitting at the bar when she arrived. The suit was the same but he’d removed his tie and when he saw her walk through the door he stood to greet her. Their table in the corner overlooked the pond between the restaurant and the mall situated behind. They ordered cocktails and too much food and when the waiter scuffled away, Carey finally said “I’m glad you came. You must think I’m quite mad.”
Alex laughed “I don’t think you’re mad, but I’m curious. About a lot of things. The last 24 hours have been…unusual.”
“Really?” Carey said.
“Mm-hmm.” She took a sip of her drink. “What is it you’re doing in Indiana again?”
“I’m a consultant. I had a client meeting.”
“What kind of consulting?”
“Oh,” he smiled, “this and that. I’m a match-maker of sorts.”
“Like…marriages?”
“Not exactly. Though that has happened a number of times, I’m proud to say.”
“Who was your client?” Alex asked.
“I can’t say. Strictly confidential. I provide a very specific service to a very high profile clientele.”
“What service?” Alex wasn’t nervous. But she had a feeling he was. He smiled.
“What do you do, Alex?”
“I teach kindergarten here in town.”
“That’s lovely.”
“Thank you. What service?”
“Say a public figure –“
“Like a celebrity?”
“If you like – a politician, a movie star, someone with a high profile – has a unique set of desires. I’m who they call for assistance.”
Alex sipped her drink. “Say more.”
“Well say for example you were a senator who happened to have a think for wearing diapers and being treated like a little baby.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You couldn’t just very well make a tinder profile. It’d be much too risky.”
“Wait, so you find willing partners for rich people?”
“In a sense, but there’s much more to it. My fee is quite substantial. It allows me to help those who can’t pay without charge.”
“You’re the Robin Hood of kink?”
Carey laughed. “If you like. Absolute discretion. Satisfaction guaranteed.”
Alex shook her head. “Why did you stop me in the store? Why am I here?”
“I want to have dinner first before I tell you about that. Is that alright?” right on cue, their food swooped in.
“Sure,” Alex said. It was only now, in the window overlooking the little pond out back that she saw her reflection. She looked as beautiful as she felt. A flowing knit shawl draped over her tank top and when she stood, came to her knees. She liked herself. It wasn’t the normal feeling.
They ate everything. They both made a fuss over the completely mediocre fish and chips, Carey saying it was “just like we have back home.” Three drinks and two hours later, there was the first lull in the conversation.
“So,” Alex said.
“So.”
“What are we doing here?”
Carey leaned back against the padded booth. “I’ve become adept at spotting people. Their…particularities.”
“How do you mean?”
“I notice things. For example the small scratch under your arm.”
Alex raised her eyebrows.
“There was also a certain way your lip curled when, in the pharmacy aisle, I held your foot in my hands.”
Without braking eye contact, alex downed her drink.
But all that was after I noticed you’d just gotten out of bed, and you don’t seem like the type to have had a one night stand. You’re clearly not in a relationship or you wouldn’t be here. So I assume you were with…yourself last night? Most kinky people spend a lot of nights that way. The scratch under your arm was made…perhaps by yourself or perhaps by a clumsy partner? But it’s not from shaving and why would a fingernail be scratching under your arm if not to try to make you laugh?”
Alex’s heart was beating so hard she could feel it in her ears. Her knees were jackhammering under the table. She managed to say, “so this is for a client? You think I would be interested in – “
“No no no. Forgive me for interrupting, but no. I wouldn’t approach it like this. You see, it’s easy to find people whose proclivities match someone else’s. It’s my job. It’s much more difficult to find someone whose interests align with,” he paused and smiled at her a bit sadly, “…with my own.”
Alex stared at him.
“Of course if I am wrong about any of this, please correct me. I’m not often wrong about this kind of thing, but it does happen.”
There was a long pause.
“Am I wrong?” he said. With as tiny a movement as she could make, Alex shook her head.
Carry leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “When I saw you, I just knew,” he said. “And I want to know you.”
Alex looked down at her hands which she saw were clasped so tightly her wrists had turned white. She inhaled sharply. “Holy shit.” She let out an awkward, breathy laugh. He smiled apologetically.
“It’s a lot. If I wasn’t leaving an an hour I’d have done this more slowly.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Duty calls. But I have a proposition.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “This is a plane ticket for tomorrow morning with your name on it. It leaves from IND at 6am and lands at Heathrow. There is, of course, no obligation to get on the plane. We can do this the old fashioned way and exchange phone numbers and try to get to know each other through screens but I’ve never much cared for that whole thing.”
“You want me to go to London tomorrow?”
It’s an open ticket. But I’d like to see you tomorrow, yes. If you’re free.”
“This is insane. I have to work on Monday.”
“I’ll have you home whenever you need.”
“How are you getting there?”
“We flew privately. You’re welcome to accompany Oliver and me but I thought you’d like time to pack.”
“Carey I don’t know what to say, I –“
“Don’t say anything. Here’s my card. There will be a car waiting for you at Heathrow tomorrow. If you don’t show up and I never hear from you again, that’s okay too. But it’s an open invitation. Now. I have to scoot. It has been a sincere pleasure meeting you, Alex.” He stood and she instinctively followed suit. He reached out an enormous hand. “See you tomorrow, I hope.”
“We’ll see.” She shook his hand and watched him pay the bill, walk out the door, get into an idling black car, and vanish into the night.
She made three wrong turns in the span of 5 miles on her way home. She felt like she’d just run a marathon – high on endorphins and simultaneously exhausted. She kept expecting to wake up, to suddenly realize the events of the past day were all a bizarre dream.
At home, she lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Of course she wasn’t going. It was ludicrous. What did he even want? Her mind flashed back to the previous evening, to the video she’d watched on repeat. Her focus had been on the victim, on the role she wanted to play in the fantasy. But she tried to imagine Carey’s face over her. She pictured him lovingly without even trying. She closed her eyes and raised her arms above her head, grabbing the base of the headboard. In her head she heard the shrieks of the woman from the video – one moment in particular had stuck with her. A finger of one of the assailants had snuck beneath the curve of the victim’s breast and was massaging the ribs beneath and through hysterical near-silent laughter, Alex could make out a whispered “not there.” She whispered it to herself as behind her eyelids, Carey’s slender finger did to her what she only yesterday realized was what she always wanted. She came in a flash without ever letting go of the bed, and a few hours later, as she gazed bleary -eyed out the window of her first-class seat at Indianapolis International getting smaller and smaller beneath her, she realized she had never been happier. Something was happening, and Alex Odd was fully alive.
I’ve been writing a long time but haven’t ever shared anything. This is the first installment of a Tickle Saga I’ve been working on. Hope you like it!
THE AWAKENING OF ALEX ODD: A Romance
Chapter 1
There was nothing particular about Alex Odd. But then nothing particular ever came out of Middletown, Indiana. It looked for a while that Mick Bradley would carry the Mudhawks to glory and a state title until a lineman named Gruber sat on his knee and that was that. And Alex Odd was fine with that. It was why she moved home after college. In fact, the apartment she rented was down the street from the kindergarten where she was once a student. In fact, it was the kindergarten where she now taught.
It was barely October, but already the elms were yellowing. As she walked, she thought about Halloween and for some reason it didn’t fill her with the usual dread…twenty five-year-olds in sheets zooming around high on corn syrup, enough decorations to fill a garbage barge, and the seethe of parents with chemical smiles, pretending not to resent the effort everyone else put into the costume parade.
Martin lived in his parents’ basement. Well now, just his mom’s basement; his dad had died when she was in college, and Martin, in a perpetual state of “figuring it out,” had just stayed. She and Martin had a standing thing on Friday nights. She brought pizza, he provided weed, and they’d zone out to some random record or movie or they’d pretend to solve the problems of the world.
When she walked in, the TV was already on. She set the large pie down on the coffee table, slipped off her shoes, and plopped down on the couch. Martin didn’t look at her.
“I see you started without me,” Alex said.
“I can’t stop watching this,” Martin said, without looking at her.
She looked at the screen. It was Disney’s The Jungle Book.
“You know, I’ve never seen this movie,” she said.
“I hadn’t either. But you gotta watch this.”
“Isn’t this super old?”
“Are you aware of the fucked up torture Disney put in its old movies?”
Martin sent the video back a minute and pressed play.
“Watch,” he said.
Later, Alex would refer to this moment as her origin myth, her “radioactive spider bite.” Her eyes grew wide as the temple crumbled and an orangutan, while trying in vain to hold up the pillars, was mercilessly tickled under his arms. The television slowly telescoped toward her. Her legs went numb. She heard her heart beating in her ears, so hard she thought her chest would explode. Martin was talking to her but she couldn’t hear him at all.
“Alex. Alex. Yo! Alex!”
“Sorry. Sorry. What?” She didn’t know why but she was suddenly so embarrassed she could hardly breathe.
“Are you alright?” Martin said.
“Yeah! Yes. Why?”
“You were like…out for a second there.”
“Yeah, sorry – long day. That’s crazy. Wanna eat pizza?” She was desperate to change the subject. Martin wouldn’t let her.
“Can you imagine this shit? Like in real life? I mean really imagine it.”
She was imagining it vividly. “Martin, you’re high.”
“Yeah but…okay try me.”
“What?!”
“I’m gonna hold this pizza up,” he grabbed the pizza, “and you…you know…tickle me.”
The word bothered her to an unreasonable degree. She looked at her friend, no hoisting a pizza box over his head.
“I’m not doing that,” she said.
“Do it! I want to experience this.”
“You’re so weird, “ she said, and poked him in the ribs. He flinched.
“No no, you have to really go for it,” he said. “Come on, just do it.”
She shook her head, brought her hands up, and dug into his armpits.
“Whaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!” he screamed. He kept them there for about five seconds while Alex wriggled her fingers before his arms and the pizza slammed down onto his lap. “That is fucking TERRIBLE!” he said, cracking up. “Fuck!”
“Why did you want that?” she said, opening the pizza box.
“It just seemed insane to me!” he said. “Okay, your turn.”
She blinked at him. Inside, she was on fire and couldn’t say why. “Not a chance.”
“Come on, you did me, now I get to do you.”
“If I do this, can we just eat pizza and watch something else?”
“Yes, just do it.”
She rolled her eyes and lifted her arms above her head. “This is unfair, you had sleeves.”
“I’ll go easy.”
She didn’t know how much time passed between when Martin’s hands made contact with her skin when she finally brought them down. When she did, Martin was sitting with his arms at his side, staring at her.
“Dude, what the hell,” he said.
She realized her arms were still over her head and she slowly dropped them to her lap.
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah, why?”
“How did you do that? I mean, you were going insane for like a minute straight.”
Could it really have been a minute? Alex’s face flushed. “Oh weird! It didn’t feel long to me. Whatever, let’s watch something else.”
“You held your arms up the whole time!” Martin wouldn’t drop it. “You were laughing so hard – I’ve never seen you like that.”
Alex tried to make a joke – something about needing a release after a long week of tiny children, but later, she couldn’t recall a single thing that happened in Martin’s basement after that.
Later, in her kitchen, she stood wide-eyed against the door. Everything looked different and she was afraid to turn the lights on. Instead, she dropped her bag, walked into her bedroom, and fell backwards into the unmade duvet.
“What in the whole entire fuck,” she said. She lifted her left arm and felt with her right hand, the stippled skin of her armpit. She shuddered at the memory. She felt a sharp twinge and realized she had a scratch from Martin’s clumsy hands. She reached under the nightstand for her laptop. The curser blinked at her.
“Just look,” she said out loud, and typed ‘tickle torture,’ into the searchbar. Just seeing the words made her shiver. It was the middle of the night before she knew it. As the pages flew past, she sought more and more, finally finding a video clip in which young woman, not dissimilar to herself, was restrained on a bed not dissimilar to hers, wearing only a pair of panties she herself could imagine wearing. For six glorious, excruciating minutes, a man and two women used every ounce of their energy to drive this poor woman to insanity by tickling every inch of her nearly naked body. There was no part of it Alex didn’t find intoxicating. Indeed, she wondered if Martin’s weed was hitting her harder than usual. The exposed skin, the attention from the three torturers, the pleas for mercy. She repeated one of the victim’s cries quietly to herself: “I can’t take it.” She watched it again and again. She slowed it down and watched it in slow motion. She watched with and without sound. There was a particular moment when the camera zoomed in until the whole shot was occupied by this woman’s stretched upper side. One of the men was standing above her, between her outstretched arms, and with methodical, surgical precision, was sliding the dull edge of him middle finger between her top rib and the curve of her breast. Alex enlarged the video to its limit and slowed it down. Waves appeared in the skin.
Her body flashed red-hot. She tore off her tanktop, threw open her nightstand drawer, and pulled her vibrator from its hiding place under her travel journal from college.
Rather than play the video again, she laid back on the bed and closed her eyes. She put the magic wand next to her and raised her arms over her head. With her right hand, she traced a line from her raised left elbow, down her armpit, to the top of her bra. Frustrated, she sat up, unclasped it, and laid back down. Picking up where she left off, her hand moved down her side, so lightly, goosebumps erupted in a tidal wave across her torso. She let out a sound somewhere between a whimper and a moan. She pictured a figure standing over her, staring lovingly at the smallest part of her…the curve of her belly, maybe. Or the freckle near her right collarbone. As her hand continued south, she pictured the figure leaning forward and raising a hand and her body arched at the exhilaration and terror of the absolute certainty she was about to be picked to pieces.
She sat up. Her hand instinctively jerked away, but she felt the feeling of it linger on its last spot like a phantom limb. Her index finger had only just touched the hollow between her hip joint and her pelvis. She had imagined, at each new location, the figure bearing down – digging and raking and flicking across. But the sensation of her own hand on her hip was a shock. She couldn’t imagine this feeling. The area, even to her own touch, was so sensitive, that the thought of having those nerves deliberately and repeatedly assaulted was overpowering almost to the point of horror. She was suddenly cold. She wrapped her duvet around her and laid back down. She turned on her side and started the video again.
She lost count of the number of times she came. With one hand she held her vibrator in place while with the other, she stroked the bottom of her bare food or traced a circle around her navel, or just stared dry-eyed at the woman on the screen and listened to her desperate hysteria, wishing she was the sweating, screaming mess on the table beneath the ravenous gazes of those tormentors.
She woke up late. As she gazed at the ceiling, now streaked with the shadow of the blinds, Alex felt her chest tighten. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye to her ear and she bit the inside of her cheek. She stood up and looked in the mirror. This body she had looked at thousand of times but had never seen. All of this beautiful body she had! Once, in college, she took a class called “philosophy of the self,” and in a misguided attempt to connect with a generation rapidly accelerating from the nuts and bolts of traditional western philosophy, had asked the class to describe themselves in one word. Alex chose “fine.” She thought this sincerely, it wasn’t a cop out. She didn’t hate herself – she even thought she was occasionally pretty. She wasn’t very tall, and she wasn’t particularly athletic. She wasn’t particularly thin or particularly curvy. Her hair was neither a rich brown nor a yellow blond, but somewhere in the middle. And for most of her life, she’d been okay with that. But looking at herself now, she didn’t only see her body, she felt it. She had never noticed her thighs before. She didn’t hate them, but they held no interest. They were just there. But as she looked at them now, she noticed each muscle and ligament, each little curve and gradation. Her belly, which had held no particular place in her esteem, now looked sumptuous – a cornucopia of nerve endings and tiny hair follicles. There was so much sensation in every inch of her. It was an extraordinary reflection she saw in the mirror – a stranger.
She showered and dressed slowly, enjoying the water and fabric on her skin. Her yogurt, the same 2% Greek-style she’d had for the last week, tasted like a feast. Each berry she plopped on top made her positively giddy, and the sunshine streaming through the kitchen window was so inviting, she decided to walk to the gourmet grocery almost a mile away rather than her usual Food Town across the street. The jangle of her keys delighted her, the gentle thud of the door elicited a smile, and the brightness of the Saturday morning sun nearly made her weep for joy.
The bang against her heel didn’t hurt as much as it surprised her.
“Oh!” She said loudly as she turned to find a grinning child barely taller than the shopping cart he’d been riding headlong down the cereal aisle. ”Oops!” She said to him – “are you here with someone?” kindergarten teacher mode kicking in.
“Oliver!” A voice called from behind the oatmeal. “I asked you to stay where I could see you!” Alex had registered it was a posh British accent by the time a tall, impossibly well-dressed man stepped out from around the end-display. He stopped and cocked his head at the boy. “We don’t ride the carts, right?”
He was long and thin – she guessed he was around 50. Salt and pepper hair fell over an intelligent brow and his suit looked like it was made for him. She didn’t realize she was staring until she looked at his face again and saw he was no longer paying attention to the boy and was looking at her inquisitively.
“Hello.” She said, too loudly. For a minute he said nothing, but seemed to recover himself quickly.
“Hello there. I’m sorry if he’s disturbed you.”
“Not at all. We were just getting to know each other.”
“This is my son, Oliver. Can you say hello?”
“Hi,” Oliver said.”
“Nice to meet you, Oliver, I’m Alex.”
“I’m Oliver,” said Oliver.
“My name is Carey.” He had stepped closer and had reached out his hand to shake hers. His fingers were so long, when Alex extended her hand, it disappeared into his.
“Nice to meet you,” she half-whispered.
“I’m sorry again about –“ Carey gestured toward his son who had removed all the rice crispy boxes from the shelf and was stacking them in the middle of the aisle. “I had a last-minute trip and his mother couldn’t take him so…here we are.” He looked down. “Your heel is bleeding.”
She hasn’t noticed but there was a small trail of blood down the back of her heel where Oliver had rammed her with the cart.
“Is that from him?”
“Oh, it’s totally fine, I barely noticed actually.” Before she knew what was happening, he had grabbed her wrist in one hand and Oliver’s in the other and was ushering them through the store. At the pharmacy, he grabbed bandaids (plasters he called them) and antiseptic wipes. He grabbed a roll of paper towels and guided her to sit on them.
“May I?” he said.
“It’s really not –“ but before she could finish, he had slipped off her flip-flop and was examining the cut on her heel. His fingers, soft and warm, were the length of her foot, almost exactly. Her heart was beating out of its chest but it’d you’d asked her, she wouldn’t have been able to say why.
“This might sting a bit,” he said and he smoothed the wipe over her heel.
“Ooh.” She grunted and instinctively reached up with her arm and grabbed the shelf behind her.
“Sorry sorry sorry, all done,” he said gently. The bandaid folded over the back of her ankle and he looked up at her. She noticed his eye clock her raised arm and lowered it self-consciously. “Good as new.”
“Thank you,” said Alex. “That was very kind.”
“The least I could have done. I’m fact,” he glanced at his watch, “let me make it up to you properly. Are you free tonight? Around 6?” She looked in his eyes. His calmness disarmed her.
“Um. Why? I mean…for what?”
“Dinner.” He helped her stand. “I won’t take no for an answer. Where’s good around here?”
“There’s a pub by the mall. I mean it isn’t fancy but –“
“It sounds perfect.”
“I’ll see you at 6?”
“I guess, yes.”
“Great. Say bye bye Oliver.”
“Bye,” said the boy.
“Please come,” Carey smiled as he took Oliver’s hand. Alex nodded and watched them walk down the aisle and out of the store.
She stood for a moment just blinking. Her basket was still by the cereal. In a daze she finished her shopping and walked home, trying to decide if she should join this man for dinner at The Jolly Miller, Middletown’s attempt at an English pub. Later she’d have little memory of the hours between the grocery story and the pub.
What she did remember was in front of a mirror trying to decide what to wear. She had never obsessed about clothes. Even on dates, she was pretty unconcerned and generally wore the same few dresses on a rotation. But tonight, she agonized. Her body, now suddenly revealed to her by the previous night’s revelations, felt constrained by her normal clothes. She closed her eyes and imagined herself the way she wanted to feel. Then without looking at her reflection, she dressed, grabbed her things, and walked out the door.
He was sitting at the bar when she arrived. The suit was the same but he’d removed his tie and when he saw her walk through the door he stood to greet her. Their table in the corner overlooked the pond between the restaurant and the mall situated behind. They ordered cocktails and too much food and when the waiter scuffled away, Carey finally said “I’m glad you came. You must think I’m quite mad.”
Alex laughed “I don’t think you’re mad, but I’m curious. About a lot of things. The last 24 hours have been…unusual.”
“Really?” Carey said.
“Mm-hmm.” She took a sip of her drink. “What is it you’re doing in Indiana again?”
“I’m a consultant. I had a client meeting.”
“What kind of consulting?”
“Oh,” he smiled, “this and that. I’m a match-maker of sorts.”
“Like…marriages?”
“Not exactly. Though that has happened a number of times, I’m proud to say.”
“Who was your client?” Alex asked.
“I can’t say. Strictly confidential. I provide a very specific service to a very high profile clientele.”
“What service?” Alex wasn’t nervous. But she had a feeling he was. He smiled.
“What do you do, Alex?”
“I teach kindergarten here in town.”
“That’s lovely.”
“Thank you. What service?”
“Say a public figure –“
“Like a celebrity?”
“If you like – a politician, a movie star, someone with a high profile – has a unique set of desires. I’m who they call for assistance.”
Alex sipped her drink. “Say more.”
“Well say for example you were a senator who happened to have a think for wearing diapers and being treated like a little baby.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You couldn’t just very well make a tinder profile. It’d be much too risky.”
“Wait, so you find willing partners for rich people?”
“In a sense, but there’s much more to it. My fee is quite substantial. It allows me to help those who can’t pay without charge.”
“You’re the Robin Hood of kink?”
Carey laughed. “If you like. Absolute discretion. Satisfaction guaranteed.”
Alex shook her head. “Why did you stop me in the store? Why am I here?”
“I want to have dinner first before I tell you about that. Is that alright?” right on cue, their food swooped in.
“Sure,” Alex said. It was only now, in the window overlooking the little pond out back that she saw her reflection. She looked as beautiful as she felt. A flowing knit shawl draped over her tank top and when she stood, came to her knees. She liked herself. It wasn’t the normal feeling.
They ate everything. They both made a fuss over the completely mediocre fish and chips, Carey saying it was “just like we have back home.” Three drinks and two hours later, there was the first lull in the conversation.
“So,” Alex said.
“So.”
“What are we doing here?”
Carey leaned back against the padded booth. “I’ve become adept at spotting people. Their…particularities.”
“How do you mean?”
“I notice things. For example the small scratch under your arm.”
Alex raised her eyebrows.
“There was also a certain way your lip curled when, in the pharmacy aisle, I held your foot in my hands.”
Without braking eye contact, alex downed her drink.
But all that was after I noticed you’d just gotten out of bed, and you don’t seem like the type to have had a one night stand. You’re clearly not in a relationship or you wouldn’t be here. So I assume you were with…yourself last night? Most kinky people spend a lot of nights that way. The scratch under your arm was made…perhaps by yourself or perhaps by a clumsy partner? But it’s not from shaving and why would a fingernail be scratching under your arm if not to try to make you laugh?”
Alex’s heart was beating so hard she could feel it in her ears. Her knees were jackhammering under the table. She managed to say, “so this is for a client? You think I would be interested in – “
“No no no. Forgive me for interrupting, but no. I wouldn’t approach it like this. You see, it’s easy to find people whose proclivities match someone else’s. It’s my job. It’s much more difficult to find someone whose interests align with,” he paused and smiled at her a bit sadly, “…with my own.”
Alex stared at him.
“Of course if I am wrong about any of this, please correct me. I’m not often wrong about this kind of thing, but it does happen.”
There was a long pause.
“Am I wrong?” he said. With as tiny a movement as she could make, Alex shook her head.
Carry leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “When I saw you, I just knew,” he said. “And I want to know you.”
Alex looked down at her hands which she saw were clasped so tightly her wrists had turned white. She inhaled sharply. “Holy shit.” She let out an awkward, breathy laugh. He smiled apologetically.
“It’s a lot. If I wasn’t leaving an an hour I’d have done this more slowly.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Duty calls. But I have a proposition.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “This is a plane ticket for tomorrow morning with your name on it. It leaves from IND at 6am and lands at Heathrow. There is, of course, no obligation to get on the plane. We can do this the old fashioned way and exchange phone numbers and try to get to know each other through screens but I’ve never much cared for that whole thing.”
“You want me to go to London tomorrow?”
It’s an open ticket. But I’d like to see you tomorrow, yes. If you’re free.”
“This is insane. I have to work on Monday.”
“I’ll have you home whenever you need.”
“How are you getting there?”
“We flew privately. You’re welcome to accompany Oliver and me but I thought you’d like time to pack.”
“Carey I don’t know what to say, I –“
“Don’t say anything. Here’s my card. There will be a car waiting for you at Heathrow tomorrow. If you don’t show up and I never hear from you again, that’s okay too. But it’s an open invitation. Now. I have to scoot. It has been a sincere pleasure meeting you, Alex.” He stood and she instinctively followed suit. He reached out an enormous hand. “See you tomorrow, I hope.”
“We’ll see.” She shook his hand and watched him pay the bill, walk out the door, get into an idling black car, and vanish into the night.
She made three wrong turns in the span of 5 miles on her way home. She felt like she’d just run a marathon – high on endorphins and simultaneously exhausted. She kept expecting to wake up, to suddenly realize the events of the past day were all a bizarre dream.
At home, she lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Of course she wasn’t going. It was ludicrous. What did he even want? Her mind flashed back to the previous evening, to the video she’d watched on repeat. Her focus had been on the victim, on the role she wanted to play in the fantasy. But she tried to imagine Carey’s face over her. She pictured him lovingly without even trying. She closed her eyes and raised her arms above her head, grabbing the base of the headboard. In her head she heard the shrieks of the woman from the video – one moment in particular had stuck with her. A finger of one of the assailants had snuck beneath the curve of the victim’s breast and was massaging the ribs beneath and through hysterical near-silent laughter, Alex could make out a whispered “not there.” She whispered it to herself as behind her eyelids, Carey’s slender finger did to her what she only yesterday realized was what she always wanted. She came in a flash without ever letting go of the bed, and a few hours later, as she gazed bleary -eyed out the window of her first-class seat at Indianapolis International getting smaller and smaller beneath her, she realized she had never been happier. Something was happening, and Alex Odd was fully alive.
