Strelnikov
4th Level Red Feather
- Joined
- May 7, 2001
- Messages
- 1,812
- Points
- 0
By Strelnikov
Copyright 2004 by the author
Dramatis Personae (in order of appearance)
Brittany Righetti
Brittany is 18, almost 19, and has lived on Tickle Street all her life. She has long dark hair and brown eyes, a beautiful Italian face and features, curves in all the right places. She has a bit of an attitude, but it can quickly be destroyed if she's tickled. She's super-ticklish, and her twin older sisters Vicky and Veronica always take advantage of that.
Joanna Shaw
Joanna is Brittany’s cousin – their mothers are twin sisters. She has lived on Tickle Street all of her life, and she had always been the perfect female athlete. She’s extremely fit and very attractive, with blue eyes, dark brown hair cut in a page bob, and freckled fair skin. She always felt invincible due to her greatness in sports, but her cousins and her little sister Jamie can always cause her to scream in ticklish laughter. She sees her ticklishness as a great weakness, and now prefers to do unto others before they can do unto her.
********************
It was one of those dreary summer days, hot and muggy, with a solid cloud deck overhead. It wasn’t quite raining, but the day was too wet to be considered misty – more like a slow, steady drizzle. Joanna plucked at her t-shirt – it clung to her, damp and unpleasant. Couldn’t be much wetter if I was swimming, she thought.
Joanna was athletic-looking and very attractive, with blue eyes, dark brown hair cut in a page bob, and tanned, freckled fair skin. She wore a ball cap, t-shirt, gym shorts and sneakers – she coached Tee-Ball at the City Park, baseball on training wheels for the little kids. But her young charges wouldn’t come today, so she had time on her hands. The rest of her fellow youth coaches had already gone home by 10 AM, but Joanna stayed at the field house to organize the equipment – she needed the hours.
Joanna finished by 11:30. She grabbed her backpack and headed over to the pool adjacent to the ball fields. Her cousin Brittany Righetti worked there as a lifeguard – the two girls usually ate lunch together.
Surprisingly, the pool wasn’t quite empty – half a dozen little kids splashed around in the shallow end. Two mothers sat and talked at a picnic table in the covered concession area, another sat in a folding chair nearby, reading – they had probably gotten tired of being stuck indoors with bored, whiny kids. A lifeguard was on the stand – Shane Wozniak, Joanna had graduated high school with him. He sat under the raised umbrella, wearing a ball cap and red swim trunks with LIFE+GUARD printed on them in white letters, looking as hot and uncomfortable as she felt.
The pool was surrounded by a 10 ft cyclone fence. The entrance was through a low cement block building. There was an open double door in the center of the blank wall that faced her. When she entered, she was in a wide hallway that led to the pool through the middle of the building. The bath houses were off the hallway to her left. On the right was the pool office with a Dutch door that doubled as a ticket window. Joanna opened the door and went inside.
The far end of the room had a concession window, flanked by a cold-drink cooler on one side and shelving full of snacks on the other. The side facing the pool had open windows all the way across. The room had an old, rust-flecked battleship-gray steel desk, a spavined swivel chair, a low rectangular table with a scarred formica top, and four cheap stackable plastic armchairs. A box fan on the floor stirred the humid air without providing any appreciable cooling. The overhead light bulb did little to brighten the place – the room looked as dreary as Joanna felt.
“Ssh! Don’t disturb Sleeping Beauty!” David Horowitz whispered. “She’s been conked out like that for an hour,” Will Jackson added, waving a hand toward Brittany. They were lifeguards too, a few years older than Joanna, peeled down to just their red Life Guard swim trunks to beat the heat. The dozen or so lifeguards were about evenly divided, guys and girls – it was just happenstance that Brittany was working with three guys today.
Brittany was in the swivel chair, bare feet propped up on the table. She had draped a big towel over the chair so she wouldn’t stick to it in the clammy heat. Like the others, she wore just her Life Guard swim suit – in her case, a red one-piece. Her long dark hair was tied back in a pony tail, and she had a ball cap pulled low to shield her eyes. She was breathing softly, sound asleep.
“She’ll get a stiff neck sleeping like that – I better wake her up,” Joanna said virtuously. “And I know just the way to do it, too...”
Joanna grabbed Brittany’s ankles in an arm lock and stood up – suddenly Brittany was sprawled backward, feet up, with gravity working against her.
“Tickle tickle!” Joanna said, and flicked her well-manicured nails in Brittany’s arches.
“NOOOOO!” Brittany yelled. She struggled, but to no avail – she was had. “Hehe! HAHAHA-HAHAHAHA-HAHAHA!” as Joanna’s fingernails flicked and scratched her ticklish soles.
Brittany and her sisters had given Joanna more than her fair share of tickling over the years. But she knew how to give it back too. Brittany laughed wildly as Joanna drew circles, squares and other tickling shapes on her heels and arches. Joanna made a Peace sign and scratched the balls of both feet, just behind the big toes, and Brittany laughed her head off.
Brittany laughed at the top of her lungs as Joanna tickled her soles, her toes twitching and curling. Joanna kept it up, tickling side to side across both soles while stream after stream of helpless laughter poured out of Brittany. Joanna spider-walked her nails down Brittany’s arches, scrabbled her nails on both heels. Then tickling in both arches, just in front of the heels – the sweet spots, where it really, really tickled. Her tickling fingernails flew, covering the sweet spots with tiny nail flicks, and Brittany’s laughter went off the scale. Joanna eased off, tickled both heels again, then back onto the sweet spots, tickling as fast as she could. Brittany lost it and laughed herself breathless.
“Awake now, cuz?” Joanna asked cheerfully.
Brittany blinked away tears of laughter, breathing hard. “I’ll... get you... for this!” she gasped out.
“You’ll have to catch me first,” Joanna said. “And you know as well as I do that I could always outrun you.”
David and Will looked at each other and grinned. Joanna’s little tickle attack had brightened up a dreary, boring day.
“You’re pretty ticklish, aren’t you?” Will asked Brittany.
Brittany turned pale under her tan. “N-no,” she stammered. “Hardly at all. Joanna just caught me by surprise. Really.”
“Uh-huh,” David said. “Quite a surprise, I guess.”
“That’s it,” Brittany said, relieved. She checked her watch. “Let’s eat – I’m starved!”
David went out to relieve Shane on the stand after lunch. They paused to exchange a few words, then Shane came back to the office. “Crummy day,” he said to no one in particular as he sat in one of the chairs. “Boring too. I wish it would either rain or not. Not just this miserable drizzle.”
“You got that right,” Brittany agreed. She took a deck of cards out of a desk drawer. “Wanna play some acey-deucey to pass the time?”
They played for penny stakes until it was Brittany’s turn on the stand. Brittany stepped into her flip-flops – she was somewhat of a tenderfoot, walking barefoot on concrete bothered her – then relieved David. He took Brittany’s place at the table. Joanna was the big loser – at the end of the hour, she was down 87 cents. A pretty cheap price for an hour’s entertainment, she thought.
Will replaced Brittany on the stand. Brittany reclaimed her seat at the table and kicked off her flip-flops. “Deal me in,” she said.
“Nah, this is getting old,” David said. He gathered up the cards and put them back in the desk drawer. “Let’s do something else.”
“I’ve got an idea...” Shane said, grinning.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” David asked, grinning back.
Joanna stood up, grabbed her backpack and headed for the door. “See ya!” she said. “Gotta get back to work!”
“Hey! What are you guys doing?” Brittany asked nervously. Joanna didn’t look back – she kept on walking.
“OH SHIT! NOT THAT!” Brittany yelled. “HAHAHAHAHA-HAHAHAHA-HAHAHA!”
Joanna paused in the hallway, listening – from the sound of her, Brittany was getting it good. Brittany had a beautiful singing voice, a clear mezzosoprano, not scratchy at all. It was getting a workout now – Brittany was laughing at the top of her lungs.
Joanna put her hands in her pockets and sauntered back to the field house through the drizzling rain. She had played a dirty trick on Brittany, but she felt no guilt. The tickling wouldn’t do Brittany any harm, and anyway Brittany had tickled her silly more times than she could count. She hummed an old show tune as she walked – “Singing in the Rain”.
The drizzle turned into honest rain. The day couldn’t get any more humid, but it got hotter, which added greatly to her comfort and convenience. Oh well – into each life, and so forth. Nobody had told Joanna to go home – the park supervisor had probably forgotten about her. Her sneakers were soggy from the wet grass – she pulled them off, knotted the strings together and stuffed her socks inside. She had swept out the field house before lunch, but she swept it again. After that, she went through the equipment one more time, not really accomplishing anything – busy work, and nothing more.
Joanna finished two hours before her regular quitting time. The rain was still coming down – might as well go home, she thought. She had a rain poncho stashed in the field house – she retrieved it, locked up, and walked back to the pool barefoot, carrying her wet sneakers. Her bicycle was in the rack there, next to Brittany’s – the two cousins rode to and from work together whenever their schedules coincided. She hooked the shoes over the handlebars and kept walking.
The kids and their moms were gone by now. Shane was in the concession area, coiling up a water hose – the lifeguards had decided to close early too, he had just washed the place down. David passed Joanna going the other way, carrying trash bags out to the dumpster. She went into the office.
“Hi, Joanna,” Brittany said. She still wore just the red swim suit, with her whistle on a braided lanyard around her neck. Her voice sounded a little rough. Joanna felt a little uneasy – how long had the guys tickled her?
“Woo!” Joanna said, flapping her poncho. “I don’t know if I’d be any wetter without this thing than I am now.”
Will looked down at Joanna’s bare feet. “Brittany said you’re even more ticklish than she is. Any truth to that?”
Oh shit! Joanna backed away and out the door. “Nope,” she said, hoping they wouldn’t catch the lie. “I’m not ticklish at all.”
“She lied to us then?” David asked – he had come back from the dumpster, and now stood blocking the outside end of the hallway.
Joanna eased away toward the pool side of the hallway. “She does that sometimes.” She knew that she could outrun Brittany and the guys. Maybe she could get away by climbing the fence – worth a try, anyway.
“I don’t think so, Pinocchio,” Shane said – he was blocking the other end of the hallway now. “Get her!”
Shane and David grabbed Joanna and wrapped her poncho around her like a cocoon. She struggled, but they were just too strong. Will rolled up a big beach towel and knotted it around Joanna’s middle, pinning her arms at her sides. Shane picked Joanna up in an over-the-shoulder fireman’s carry and carried her into the office. She kicked and squirmed, trying with all her strength to escape. The guys just laughed.
Brittany! Her cousin was still in the office. Maybe she could reason with Brittany...
“Enjoy yourselves, guys,” Brittany said, and headed for the door. “I’ll go and wash down the bath houses.”
“NOOOO!” Joanna yelled. “HELP!”
“She’s gone – save your breath,” Will advised.
“You’re gonna need it,” Shane added. “Where to?”
“On the table, face up,” David answered.
David helped Shane to lay Joanna on the table. Will sat on the end of the table, grabbed Joanna’s ankles and trapped them in a simple leg lock.
“Letmego letmego letmeGO!” Joanna yelled.
Will traced a fingernail in Joanna’s arch, not making much contact but tickling like crazy. “Hee! HAHA! HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHA!” she laughed, squirming like a worm, trying desperately to pull her feet away.
Gratified by her response, Will dug in, flicking his nails in Joanna’s arches. He tickled up onto her soles, watching her toes twitch and curl while she laughed with wild abandon. He spread her toes two by two and tickled between each pair, and was rewarded each time with a burst of ticklish laughter. He held her toes back and tickled under them, then down onto the stretched out soles, and Joanna laughed her head off.
Joanna felt her strength slipping away as the tickling overpowered her, but there was worse to come. Will tickled down her arches and got on the sweet spots – like Brittany, in her arches, just in front of her heels – and her laughter went off the charts.
Will tickled down onto both heels, drawing circles and other tickling shapes – maybe he didn’t notice the sweet spots. Oh ghod how it tickled! But no such luck – he was tickling in her arches now, and she laughed at the top of her lungs. She had quit struggling. All she could do was lay there and laugh – and laugh – and laugh some more.
He took pity on her at last and quit. Joanna laid there, red-faced and breathless, tears of laughter running down her cheeks. The poncho cocoon felt like a sauna.
“Sings pretty good, doesen’t she?” David asked.
“Beautiful voice,” Shane agreed.
Shane and David hadn’t tickled her yet, Joanna thought despairingly – she had a long, long time yet to go. She took long, deep breaths, trying to get her wind back.
Will released the leg lock and stood up. “Who’s up next?” he asked.
David won the toss. He was a better tickler than Will – he had practiced on his sister, he said. And then it was Shane’s turn. He wasn’t as skilled, but all of the tickling had sensitized Joanna’s feet – everything he did drove her wild. Joanna laughed like mad, lost in ticklish delirium.
Shane stopped tickling. Joanna giggled weakly as she came back to her senses. She blinked away tears, saw that Brittany was back in the office again. She couldn’t take much more...
“Brittany... help...” Joanna gasped out.
Brittany grinned wolfishly. “Sure I’ll help ‘em,” she said. “Roll her over, guys,” she said.
Brittany sat on Joanna facing aft, grabbed her cousin’s ankles and pulled. She wrapped one leg around Joanna’s shins, tucked the foot under the upraised knee of the other in the figure-four leg lock.
“Oh no... no more... please...” Joanna begged.
“Yup,” Brittany said. “You started this, Joanna. They tickled the shit outa me, all three of ‘em, from the time you left until my next shift on the stand. An hour and a half worth.” She took off the whistle lanyard and threaded it between Joanna’s right little and next toes. “You just think the guys tickled you silly – wait ‘til I’m through with you!” Brittany drew the lanyard back and forth, tickling like crazy. Joanna burst into ticklish laughter, howling with forced mirth.
“You guys are weak – really weak,” Brittany said. She carefully tickled between each pair of toes, forcing another wild burst of laughter each time. “What you did to Joanna and me didn’t tickle near as much as it could have.” She discarded the lanyard and used her nails – Joanna laughed her head off as Brittany held her toes back and tickled side to side under all ten toes. “You wanna make Joanna sing, watch and learn,” Brittany said. “I learned from the best.”
“Your sisters?” David asked. “I remember them. There were rumors at school...”
“All true,” Brittany said. She made a claw of her right hand and raked her fingernails down Joanna’s right foot, toes to heel, drawing four fast parallel zigzag lines and applying just enough pressure to tickle horribly. “They stay in practice too, just like I do.” Brittany repeated the whole-foot tickle, alternating between both feet, and Joanna laughed like a madwoman. It went on for what seemed like forever.
Brittany paused to let Joanna catch her breath. Then Brittany tickled her again, two handed, flicking and scratching the sweet spots, and Joanna laughed at the top of her lungs. She was no longer capable of resistance, or even coherent thought.
Brittany played Joanna like a musical instrument, getting great reactions and forcing stream after stream of helpless laughter. Joanna thought, no hoped, her cousin would tickle her to death. Anything to stop the tickling! But Brittany showed no sign of stopping – she held Joanna on the edge until she thought she would go crazy. The rain stopped before Brittany did – Joanna laughed and laughed, helpless to resist the fiendish and well techniqued tickling.
Joanna was a wreck when they finally unrolled her from her poncho. She was soaked in sweat, her ribs and abs ached from laughing, her throat was desert dry. She laid there on the table, gasping, too shaky to even sit up.
“So long, guys,” Brittany said. “I’ll close up and make sure she gets home.”
Brittany started closing windows. Joanna tried to sit up, winced, and managed it on the second attempt. She drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees.
“Doing OK, cousin?” Brittany asked. She grabbed a bottled water out of the cooler and handed it to Joanna – Joanna finished it in three long gulps.
Brittany finished with the windows. She put her shorts and t-shirt on over her swim suit and stepped into her flip-flops. “Let’s lock up and go home,” she said, and flipped off the overhead light. “Have you learned your lesson?”
Joanna stood up and grinned crookedly. “My singing lesson?” she asked as they walked down the hallway.
“No, silly!” Brittany said. “You know what I mean.” She locked the outer doors behind them.
“Oh, that!” Joanna said. She grinned with anticipation, thinking about what she planned to do to Brittany. “Yah, I’ll never tickle you again.” Brittany had lied to the guys – she was every bit as ticklish as Joanna.
“And if you believe that,” Joanna added, “I’ll tell you another.”
***THE END***
Copyright 2004 by the author
Dramatis Personae (in order of appearance)
Brittany Righetti
Brittany is 18, almost 19, and has lived on Tickle Street all her life. She has long dark hair and brown eyes, a beautiful Italian face and features, curves in all the right places. She has a bit of an attitude, but it can quickly be destroyed if she's tickled. She's super-ticklish, and her twin older sisters Vicky and Veronica always take advantage of that.
Joanna Shaw
Joanna is Brittany’s cousin – their mothers are twin sisters. She has lived on Tickle Street all of her life, and she had always been the perfect female athlete. She’s extremely fit and very attractive, with blue eyes, dark brown hair cut in a page bob, and freckled fair skin. She always felt invincible due to her greatness in sports, but her cousins and her little sister Jamie can always cause her to scream in ticklish laughter. She sees her ticklishness as a great weakness, and now prefers to do unto others before they can do unto her.
********************
It was one of those dreary summer days, hot and muggy, with a solid cloud deck overhead. It wasn’t quite raining, but the day was too wet to be considered misty – more like a slow, steady drizzle. Joanna plucked at her t-shirt – it clung to her, damp and unpleasant. Couldn’t be much wetter if I was swimming, she thought.
Joanna was athletic-looking and very attractive, with blue eyes, dark brown hair cut in a page bob, and tanned, freckled fair skin. She wore a ball cap, t-shirt, gym shorts and sneakers – she coached Tee-Ball at the City Park, baseball on training wheels for the little kids. But her young charges wouldn’t come today, so she had time on her hands. The rest of her fellow youth coaches had already gone home by 10 AM, but Joanna stayed at the field house to organize the equipment – she needed the hours.
Joanna finished by 11:30. She grabbed her backpack and headed over to the pool adjacent to the ball fields. Her cousin Brittany Righetti worked there as a lifeguard – the two girls usually ate lunch together.
Surprisingly, the pool wasn’t quite empty – half a dozen little kids splashed around in the shallow end. Two mothers sat and talked at a picnic table in the covered concession area, another sat in a folding chair nearby, reading – they had probably gotten tired of being stuck indoors with bored, whiny kids. A lifeguard was on the stand – Shane Wozniak, Joanna had graduated high school with him. He sat under the raised umbrella, wearing a ball cap and red swim trunks with LIFE+GUARD printed on them in white letters, looking as hot and uncomfortable as she felt.
The pool was surrounded by a 10 ft cyclone fence. The entrance was through a low cement block building. There was an open double door in the center of the blank wall that faced her. When she entered, she was in a wide hallway that led to the pool through the middle of the building. The bath houses were off the hallway to her left. On the right was the pool office with a Dutch door that doubled as a ticket window. Joanna opened the door and went inside.
The far end of the room had a concession window, flanked by a cold-drink cooler on one side and shelving full of snacks on the other. The side facing the pool had open windows all the way across. The room had an old, rust-flecked battleship-gray steel desk, a spavined swivel chair, a low rectangular table with a scarred formica top, and four cheap stackable plastic armchairs. A box fan on the floor stirred the humid air without providing any appreciable cooling. The overhead light bulb did little to brighten the place – the room looked as dreary as Joanna felt.
“Ssh! Don’t disturb Sleeping Beauty!” David Horowitz whispered. “She’s been conked out like that for an hour,” Will Jackson added, waving a hand toward Brittany. They were lifeguards too, a few years older than Joanna, peeled down to just their red Life Guard swim trunks to beat the heat. The dozen or so lifeguards were about evenly divided, guys and girls – it was just happenstance that Brittany was working with three guys today.
Brittany was in the swivel chair, bare feet propped up on the table. She had draped a big towel over the chair so she wouldn’t stick to it in the clammy heat. Like the others, she wore just her Life Guard swim suit – in her case, a red one-piece. Her long dark hair was tied back in a pony tail, and she had a ball cap pulled low to shield her eyes. She was breathing softly, sound asleep.
“She’ll get a stiff neck sleeping like that – I better wake her up,” Joanna said virtuously. “And I know just the way to do it, too...”
Joanna grabbed Brittany’s ankles in an arm lock and stood up – suddenly Brittany was sprawled backward, feet up, with gravity working against her.
“Tickle tickle!” Joanna said, and flicked her well-manicured nails in Brittany’s arches.
“NOOOOO!” Brittany yelled. She struggled, but to no avail – she was had. “Hehe! HAHAHA-HAHAHAHA-HAHAHA!” as Joanna’s fingernails flicked and scratched her ticklish soles.
Brittany and her sisters had given Joanna more than her fair share of tickling over the years. But she knew how to give it back too. Brittany laughed wildly as Joanna drew circles, squares and other tickling shapes on her heels and arches. Joanna made a Peace sign and scratched the balls of both feet, just behind the big toes, and Brittany laughed her head off.
Brittany laughed at the top of her lungs as Joanna tickled her soles, her toes twitching and curling. Joanna kept it up, tickling side to side across both soles while stream after stream of helpless laughter poured out of Brittany. Joanna spider-walked her nails down Brittany’s arches, scrabbled her nails on both heels. Then tickling in both arches, just in front of the heels – the sweet spots, where it really, really tickled. Her tickling fingernails flew, covering the sweet spots with tiny nail flicks, and Brittany’s laughter went off the scale. Joanna eased off, tickled both heels again, then back onto the sweet spots, tickling as fast as she could. Brittany lost it and laughed herself breathless.
“Awake now, cuz?” Joanna asked cheerfully.
Brittany blinked away tears of laughter, breathing hard. “I’ll... get you... for this!” she gasped out.
“You’ll have to catch me first,” Joanna said. “And you know as well as I do that I could always outrun you.”
David and Will looked at each other and grinned. Joanna’s little tickle attack had brightened up a dreary, boring day.
“You’re pretty ticklish, aren’t you?” Will asked Brittany.
Brittany turned pale under her tan. “N-no,” she stammered. “Hardly at all. Joanna just caught me by surprise. Really.”
“Uh-huh,” David said. “Quite a surprise, I guess.”
“That’s it,” Brittany said, relieved. She checked her watch. “Let’s eat – I’m starved!”
David went out to relieve Shane on the stand after lunch. They paused to exchange a few words, then Shane came back to the office. “Crummy day,” he said to no one in particular as he sat in one of the chairs. “Boring too. I wish it would either rain or not. Not just this miserable drizzle.”
“You got that right,” Brittany agreed. She took a deck of cards out of a desk drawer. “Wanna play some acey-deucey to pass the time?”
They played for penny stakes until it was Brittany’s turn on the stand. Brittany stepped into her flip-flops – she was somewhat of a tenderfoot, walking barefoot on concrete bothered her – then relieved David. He took Brittany’s place at the table. Joanna was the big loser – at the end of the hour, she was down 87 cents. A pretty cheap price for an hour’s entertainment, she thought.
Will replaced Brittany on the stand. Brittany reclaimed her seat at the table and kicked off her flip-flops. “Deal me in,” she said.
“Nah, this is getting old,” David said. He gathered up the cards and put them back in the desk drawer. “Let’s do something else.”
“I’ve got an idea...” Shane said, grinning.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” David asked, grinning back.
Joanna stood up, grabbed her backpack and headed for the door. “See ya!” she said. “Gotta get back to work!”
“Hey! What are you guys doing?” Brittany asked nervously. Joanna didn’t look back – she kept on walking.
“OH SHIT! NOT THAT!” Brittany yelled. “HAHAHAHAHA-HAHAHAHA-HAHAHA!”
Joanna paused in the hallway, listening – from the sound of her, Brittany was getting it good. Brittany had a beautiful singing voice, a clear mezzosoprano, not scratchy at all. It was getting a workout now – Brittany was laughing at the top of her lungs.
Joanna put her hands in her pockets and sauntered back to the field house through the drizzling rain. She had played a dirty trick on Brittany, but she felt no guilt. The tickling wouldn’t do Brittany any harm, and anyway Brittany had tickled her silly more times than she could count. She hummed an old show tune as she walked – “Singing in the Rain”.
The drizzle turned into honest rain. The day couldn’t get any more humid, but it got hotter, which added greatly to her comfort and convenience. Oh well – into each life, and so forth. Nobody had told Joanna to go home – the park supervisor had probably forgotten about her. Her sneakers were soggy from the wet grass – she pulled them off, knotted the strings together and stuffed her socks inside. She had swept out the field house before lunch, but she swept it again. After that, she went through the equipment one more time, not really accomplishing anything – busy work, and nothing more.
Joanna finished two hours before her regular quitting time. The rain was still coming down – might as well go home, she thought. She had a rain poncho stashed in the field house – she retrieved it, locked up, and walked back to the pool barefoot, carrying her wet sneakers. Her bicycle was in the rack there, next to Brittany’s – the two cousins rode to and from work together whenever their schedules coincided. She hooked the shoes over the handlebars and kept walking.
The kids and their moms were gone by now. Shane was in the concession area, coiling up a water hose – the lifeguards had decided to close early too, he had just washed the place down. David passed Joanna going the other way, carrying trash bags out to the dumpster. She went into the office.
“Hi, Joanna,” Brittany said. She still wore just the red swim suit, with her whistle on a braided lanyard around her neck. Her voice sounded a little rough. Joanna felt a little uneasy – how long had the guys tickled her?
“Woo!” Joanna said, flapping her poncho. “I don’t know if I’d be any wetter without this thing than I am now.”
Will looked down at Joanna’s bare feet. “Brittany said you’re even more ticklish than she is. Any truth to that?”
Oh shit! Joanna backed away and out the door. “Nope,” she said, hoping they wouldn’t catch the lie. “I’m not ticklish at all.”
“She lied to us then?” David asked – he had come back from the dumpster, and now stood blocking the outside end of the hallway.
Joanna eased away toward the pool side of the hallway. “She does that sometimes.” She knew that she could outrun Brittany and the guys. Maybe she could get away by climbing the fence – worth a try, anyway.
“I don’t think so, Pinocchio,” Shane said – he was blocking the other end of the hallway now. “Get her!”
Shane and David grabbed Joanna and wrapped her poncho around her like a cocoon. She struggled, but they were just too strong. Will rolled up a big beach towel and knotted it around Joanna’s middle, pinning her arms at her sides. Shane picked Joanna up in an over-the-shoulder fireman’s carry and carried her into the office. She kicked and squirmed, trying with all her strength to escape. The guys just laughed.
Brittany! Her cousin was still in the office. Maybe she could reason with Brittany...
“Enjoy yourselves, guys,” Brittany said, and headed for the door. “I’ll go and wash down the bath houses.”
“NOOOO!” Joanna yelled. “HELP!”
“She’s gone – save your breath,” Will advised.
“You’re gonna need it,” Shane added. “Where to?”
“On the table, face up,” David answered.
David helped Shane to lay Joanna on the table. Will sat on the end of the table, grabbed Joanna’s ankles and trapped them in a simple leg lock.
“Letmego letmego letmeGO!” Joanna yelled.
Will traced a fingernail in Joanna’s arch, not making much contact but tickling like crazy. “Hee! HAHA! HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHA!” she laughed, squirming like a worm, trying desperately to pull her feet away.
Gratified by her response, Will dug in, flicking his nails in Joanna’s arches. He tickled up onto her soles, watching her toes twitch and curl while she laughed with wild abandon. He spread her toes two by two and tickled between each pair, and was rewarded each time with a burst of ticklish laughter. He held her toes back and tickled under them, then down onto the stretched out soles, and Joanna laughed her head off.
Joanna felt her strength slipping away as the tickling overpowered her, but there was worse to come. Will tickled down her arches and got on the sweet spots – like Brittany, in her arches, just in front of her heels – and her laughter went off the charts.
Will tickled down onto both heels, drawing circles and other tickling shapes – maybe he didn’t notice the sweet spots. Oh ghod how it tickled! But no such luck – he was tickling in her arches now, and she laughed at the top of her lungs. She had quit struggling. All she could do was lay there and laugh – and laugh – and laugh some more.
He took pity on her at last and quit. Joanna laid there, red-faced and breathless, tears of laughter running down her cheeks. The poncho cocoon felt like a sauna.
“Sings pretty good, doesen’t she?” David asked.
“Beautiful voice,” Shane agreed.
Shane and David hadn’t tickled her yet, Joanna thought despairingly – she had a long, long time yet to go. She took long, deep breaths, trying to get her wind back.
Will released the leg lock and stood up. “Who’s up next?” he asked.
David won the toss. He was a better tickler than Will – he had practiced on his sister, he said. And then it was Shane’s turn. He wasn’t as skilled, but all of the tickling had sensitized Joanna’s feet – everything he did drove her wild. Joanna laughed like mad, lost in ticklish delirium.
Shane stopped tickling. Joanna giggled weakly as she came back to her senses. She blinked away tears, saw that Brittany was back in the office again. She couldn’t take much more...
“Brittany... help...” Joanna gasped out.
Brittany grinned wolfishly. “Sure I’ll help ‘em,” she said. “Roll her over, guys,” she said.
Brittany sat on Joanna facing aft, grabbed her cousin’s ankles and pulled. She wrapped one leg around Joanna’s shins, tucked the foot under the upraised knee of the other in the figure-four leg lock.
“Oh no... no more... please...” Joanna begged.
“Yup,” Brittany said. “You started this, Joanna. They tickled the shit outa me, all three of ‘em, from the time you left until my next shift on the stand. An hour and a half worth.” She took off the whistle lanyard and threaded it between Joanna’s right little and next toes. “You just think the guys tickled you silly – wait ‘til I’m through with you!” Brittany drew the lanyard back and forth, tickling like crazy. Joanna burst into ticklish laughter, howling with forced mirth.
“You guys are weak – really weak,” Brittany said. She carefully tickled between each pair of toes, forcing another wild burst of laughter each time. “What you did to Joanna and me didn’t tickle near as much as it could have.” She discarded the lanyard and used her nails – Joanna laughed her head off as Brittany held her toes back and tickled side to side under all ten toes. “You wanna make Joanna sing, watch and learn,” Brittany said. “I learned from the best.”
“Your sisters?” David asked. “I remember them. There were rumors at school...”
“All true,” Brittany said. She made a claw of her right hand and raked her fingernails down Joanna’s right foot, toes to heel, drawing four fast parallel zigzag lines and applying just enough pressure to tickle horribly. “They stay in practice too, just like I do.” Brittany repeated the whole-foot tickle, alternating between both feet, and Joanna laughed like a madwoman. It went on for what seemed like forever.
Brittany paused to let Joanna catch her breath. Then Brittany tickled her again, two handed, flicking and scratching the sweet spots, and Joanna laughed at the top of her lungs. She was no longer capable of resistance, or even coherent thought.
Brittany played Joanna like a musical instrument, getting great reactions and forcing stream after stream of helpless laughter. Joanna thought, no hoped, her cousin would tickle her to death. Anything to stop the tickling! But Brittany showed no sign of stopping – she held Joanna on the edge until she thought she would go crazy. The rain stopped before Brittany did – Joanna laughed and laughed, helpless to resist the fiendish and well techniqued tickling.
Joanna was a wreck when they finally unrolled her from her poncho. She was soaked in sweat, her ribs and abs ached from laughing, her throat was desert dry. She laid there on the table, gasping, too shaky to even sit up.
“So long, guys,” Brittany said. “I’ll close up and make sure she gets home.”
Brittany started closing windows. Joanna tried to sit up, winced, and managed it on the second attempt. She drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees.
“Doing OK, cousin?” Brittany asked. She grabbed a bottled water out of the cooler and handed it to Joanna – Joanna finished it in three long gulps.
Brittany finished with the windows. She put her shorts and t-shirt on over her swim suit and stepped into her flip-flops. “Let’s lock up and go home,” she said, and flipped off the overhead light. “Have you learned your lesson?”
Joanna stood up and grinned crookedly. “My singing lesson?” she asked as they walked down the hallway.
“No, silly!” Brittany said. “You know what I mean.” She locked the outer doors behind them.
“Oh, that!” Joanna said. She grinned with anticipation, thinking about what she planned to do to Brittany. “Yah, I’ll never tickle you again.” Brittany had lied to the guys – she was every bit as ticklish as Joanna.
“And if you believe that,” Joanna added, “I’ll tell you another.”
***THE END***
