I thought of this story when I saw an angry but undeniably attractive protester as the lead photo of an election post-mortem. This story, more of a hurried experiment than a polished narrative, resulted.
After the World Ends (m/f)
by
Kid Indy
11 November 2016, 2:00 PM
Three days after the election, Hillary Clinton for President campaign headquarters in Columbus, Ohio was the zombie town that any losing political campaign's facility is bound to become. The day after election day most of the staff got together to commiserate but by evening had returned to homes and schools and families. Some remained longer, helping to take down signs, and as a day and two days passed, the bustling mission control became the haunt of the most forlorn janitors that Ohio had known for some time.
Carrie was among those who remained, helping to load crates onto trucks to return leased office equipment and mostly keeping quiet along with the five or six people still left in the office. Most of the other college students had returned to their classes, but Carrie had taken the semester off, she reminded herself yet again, so she had until the end of November on this short-term lease to leave. So as almost all of her comrades returned to classes and exams, Carrie set herself at least to cleaning up well after a mission that had not succeeded.
As she pushed a broom across a floor that had been busy with eager campaigners a mere week before, her phone vibrated, and she immediately stood the broom up with one hand and reached to her pocket with the other. She gasped as the glowing screen reminded her:
TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT. SEE YOU ON CAMPUS
* * * * * *
31 October 2016, 7:00 PM
The senior staffers, campaigners with grandchildren at home waiting to go trick-or-treating, gave the interns Halloween night off, and Carrie Norwood needed a night off. Her Kenyon professors had tried to dissuade her from leaving college for the fall semester, but she heard the call to fight off the barbarian at the gate, and she had put in seventy-hour weeks since the beginning of September. She had walked neighborhoods, made polling and fundraising calls, and done everything that a presidential campaign in a swing state has to do, and here, nine days out from the first woman president's inauguration, she agreed to go out with the girls for some premature celebration.
Despite weeks of campaign-eating (a diet of pizza and other junk), Carrie fit into her flapper dress like a dream, and looking in her mirror, she knew it. She adjusted a black-feather-adorned headband in her hair, dyed a bright green. She knew that bit was an anachronism, but she was trolling college boys, not working as a movie extra, and she knew just how little they would be looking at her hair when this much of her legs greeted their eyes. A group of six campaign interns and other workers were going out to an Ohio State bar, and Carrie knew that they didn't see this coming. She twirled her feather boa and swivelled her hips, making herself laugh as she got ready to hit the town.
At the Ohio State bar, the Clinton chicks (that's what they had decided to call themselves, as they walked the town) got a table, ordered the first round, and enjoyed the sensation of being the new girls in town. Young men in OSU sweatshirts turned their heads to look at the six new faces in the bar, and most of them went beyond to enjoy the tight-costumed bodies and legs that came with them. The first one brave enough to venture a come-on got to be an example for the rest: the pack of girls laughed in his face, ridiculing the attempt and signalling to the bar that this table was for looking but not touching. Two rounds gave way to four, and they became louder as the evening wore on.
But their own laughter at each other's jokes soon gave way to an overwhelming noise: five men, perhaps in their mid-twenties or late twenties, burst through the door roaring at one of their own jokes. Immediately every eye in the place went to the men too old to be trolling college girls and to the bright red caps that they sported. Most of the drinkers assumed that Make America Great Again was just a dumb costume and went back to what they were doing.
Carrie had drunk just enough that she wasn't going to let that pass as a costume.
* * * * * *
11 November 2016, 2:01 PM
THE GIRLS HAVE ALL GONE HOME. NOT COMING ALONE.
WE'LL COME TO KENYON, THEN. A BET'S A BET
I CAN'T DO THIS AT KENYON I'LL GET KICKED OUT
THEN TELL THEM TO COME BACK TO COLUMBUS FOR ONE NIGHT
* * * * * *
31 October 2016, 11:30 PM
"Carrie! What are you doing? Get back over here!"
But she was already standing toe to toe with one of the men.
"That man-child Trump isn't going to make anything great, you jerk!"
The other men in caps looked away, but the tall ringleader stared right back into Carrie's eyes. He spoke with an even voice, perhaps a bit too loud from the bar before.
"We'll just have to see when he wins this thing and throws out all of the old guard."
Carrie's eyes flashed at the challenge. "That racist piece of crap isn't throwing anyone out, and I'm here in Columbus to make sure that never happens!"
The man smiled. "Ah, so you're a campaign worker, huh? Me too!" At this point Carrie's friends from the campaign office had made their way to her sides, so that the Clinton crew and the Trump crew stood toe to toe, a sad imitation of a Western-movie standoff. "I hate to tell you, but the Clinton years ended when you were in diapers, and they're not coming back!"
Carrie's mind spun as she decided not to correct him and place herself in grade school in 2001. "You've got to be kidding me! You're as delusional as Donald Trump is! Have you seen the poll numbers?"
"Those pollsters don't know what they're talking about. Our people are out in the small towns and up in the Cleveland neighborhoods, and we're going to take Ohio right out of your establishment hands!"
"You wanna bet?"
"What do you have to bet with?"
Carrie was getting louder, and as her skin flushed, more than one pair of eyes in the bar found her more and more attractive as her convictions made her bolder and bolder. "When Hillary Clinton wins the White House, you have to read the epilogue to Handmaid's Tale out loud, and I'm putting it on YouTube for everyone to see!"
"And what if Trump wins?"
"He's not going to!"
The man gave a sly look. "How about this? If Trump wins, you have to read the "You have to love Big Brother" chapter from 1984 out loud, and I'll put that on YouTube." Both gangs of campaign workers were cheering at this point at the test of political confidence.
Carrie turned to her friends, then back to the big Trump supporter. "You've got a deal!"
* * * * * *
11 November 2016, 7:43 PM
Carrie's friends Moira and Anna met her at her apartment and waited. All three were still in shock at what had happened with the election and outraged at the rising hate-crime in the days after, but now they feared not for minorities they'd only briefly met but for their friend Carrie. The man, Benjamin Nelson by the contact he had left on her phone, would be coming with two of his friends, and he would be putting his hands on Carrie. Anna, working out her worry verbally, pulled her phone from her pocket. Next to the pants-suited Carrie, Moira's leggings and long-sleeved t-shirt and Anna's jeans and sweatshirt were decidedly underdressed for the evening.
"We should call the police before they get here."
Moira scowled. "And tell them what? That we lost a bet with some Trump campaign staffers? You realize how weird that's going to sound?"
Carrie, overdressed in her job-interview suit next to her sweatshirt-clad friends, who had not spoken much, said quietly, "I can't believe she lost the state and the election."
Anna shrugged. "We had the polls in our favor. There's no way you could have known!"
Before they could start rehashing the election again, they heard a loud knock at Carrie's apartment door. When Carrie opened the door Ben, along with two of his friends from the bar, strode confidently into the apartment, arms full of what looked like lighting equipment. "Alright! Pant-suit nation returns! I've been looking forward to this, Carrie, I really have."
Anna tried to seem brave. "Where's your book? Let's get this done."
"Patience, patience! I'm going to need help from you two." Moira and Anna looked at each other and back at Ben.
"What do you want from us?"
* * * * * *
31 October 2016, 11:32 PM
The pack of girls began to return to her table. Carrie's slightly-inebriated confidence was soaring when the Trump campaign staffer shouted to her turned back.
"But that's not all that exciting, is it? What if we go double or nothing on Ohio?"
"What?"
"It wouldn't be all that satisfying if Trump won Pennsylvania but lost Ohio, so what do you say we up the stakes if Clinton wins Ohio and the White House?"
At this point Carrie was in too deep to back down. A nearby TV, tuned to ESPN, had gone to a commercial break, an ad for the district's GOP candidate for the House. In the ad he was visiting a local farmer. Glancing at that commercial, then turning her eyes to burn a hole in the Trumpster's forehead, she growled, "When Clinton wins Ohio and the White House, I want you to read the epilogue to Atwood--while wearing a prom dress in a hog pen!"
At that the Clinton gang hooted in approval, and even the Trump staffers laughed at the prospect of their ringleader's humiliation.
The tall man merely grinned as a chess player might grin when seizing center-board. "And when Trump wins Ohio and the White House, you're going to read the "You must love Big Brother" scene wearing a pants suit... while I tickle your feet."
Suddenly the color went out of Carrie's face. The feathers draped over her shoulder suddenly became the center of her attention, and she scanned the room around her. The Trump staffers were hooting at the prospect, and at her left and right her friends laughed at the prospect. Carrie froze; she could not imagine letting a stranger tickle her, but now to back down would be to yield this scene to a man who represented what she hated most. She set her jaw and extended her hand.
"Deal!"
They shook, and their friends watched as each gave the other a phone number to call once time came to collect on the bet.
* * * * * *
11 November 2016, 7:48 PM
Ben had the look of a cat toying with a mouse as he looked from girl to girl, settling his eyes on Carrie. "Oh, nothing too difficult. One of you needs to hold the book and the other a light so that Carrie can see what she's reading." As he spoke his counterparts extended telescoping legs on a tripod, set up some much larger portable video lighting, and prepared to make the clip something the Internet could enjoy. Carrie's friends reluctantly agreed.
One of Ben's friends went back outside and came back with a large, heavy-looking wooden frame. Anna shook her head and pointed. "There is NO WAY she's putting her feet in that."
Ben laughed at the protest. "She made the bet, didn't you, Carrie? You wouldn't have backed down if I had said I wouldn't wear THAT dress, would you?"
Moira jumped in. "But she won't be able to move her feet! Those are stocks!"
"Right on both counts--what was your name?"
"Moira."
"You see, Moira, that's what's going to make this video awesome. Now are you holding the book or the reading light?" He turned to one of his companions. "Jay, are we about ready?" Jay, a tall man with broad shoulders, was already moving the stocks in front of the apartment's lone couch, and he nodded his readiness. "Alright, Carrie. It's time to pay up on your bet. Sit on the couch and put your feet in the stocks!" Carrie, attempting to muster some dignity, sat and lifted one leg, then the other, to the padded wooden semi-circles. Jay secured the stocks, then returned to his place behind the camera. The third man, still unnamed, adjusted lights.
Ben sat on the couch next to the restrained Carrie and put on his best video personality. "Hello, Internet!" Carrie's eyes rolled as her disdain clashed with her fear. "This is Ben Nelson, and I'm here with Carrie, a friend I met during campaign season. As you can tell from the pantsuit, Carrie was hoping that Hillary Clinton would be our next president, but now she's one of the sad liberals who needs a safe space."
Carrie's face had curled into a snarl as she became a living, breathing Internet meme. Ben continued.
"But we're here to help her! Remember books, Internet? Those places where ideas still hide out while liberals like Carrie post about their microaggressions on Twitter? Well, we're going to let Carrie remember one of the great ones today and help her see what Donald Trump has saved so many Americans from. So, without further adieu, here's Carrie, Clinton campaign staffer, reading from George Orwell's 1984!"
He signaled to Anna to hold the copy of Orwell and to Moira to illuminate the page, which was a silhouette, from where Carrie sat, against the bright set lights. Nervously Carrie began: "He was much better. He was growing fatter and stronger every day, if it was proper to speak of days." Her voice started to rise in pitch as she felt Ben slowly remove her right shoe. As she continued reading, she felt the apartment's cool air on both soles and stuttered just a bit as she heard the shoes both hit the floor. She looked away from the book and stopped reading. "No, wait! I can't do--"
Her protest rose to a shriek as Ben began to scratch at the nylon hose covering her right foot. He realized in a second's time that he really had struck gold here: even the light touches of his fingertips made Carrie's hips buck off the couch, and as she tried to sit up and cover her feet with her hands, a quick scrabble down the sole made her lurch backwards, nearly knocking Moira over, as another ticklish scream came out of her. Setting himself up for some more sustained tickling, Ben grabbed Carrie's toes and pulled them backwards, towards the stock, and she tried to sit up again, her hands this time folding together in some parody of prayer before his other hand began to scratch at her heel. Without any leverage to escape, Carrie simply thrashed as Moira tried to jump clear and Anna strove valiantly to call to her and encourage her to read more of the chapter. Carrie's hands covered her face in humiliation as her scream turned into a moan and fought against the laugh that wanted so badly to emerge from her abdomen.
Ben knew better: no amount of pride was going to last long against the raw reality of ticklish skin, nylon hose, and a persistent pervert like him, and Carrie's feet were no normal extremities. With only one hand working on only one foot, Ben was sure that he could reduce the proud, boasting woman from the bar to begging in minutes, maybe less, and his fingers did his libido's bidding on her sole, then her heel, then the ball of her foot.
Anna, in a moment of nobility, grabbed at Ben's wrist and pulled his hand away from Carrie's foot, giving her a moment to breathe.
Ben, taken aback for a moment, had a laugh of his own. "Now Anna, you were there when Carrie made this bet. She's got to finish this chapter, and you'd better let her!" He glanced back at the camera and licked his lips as he realized that the Internet was going to see the coming drama play out.
"Look, you jerk, she can't read while you're doing that! Just let her go!"
"Room 101 doesn't just let people go, Anna. Room 101 is where the worst thing in the world happens!"
"Just stop with the dramatic crap, Ben! She can't read when you're doing that to her!"
Ben turned and looked into the camera. "Well, Internet, is she right? Is Carrie doomed to be tickled to death before she finishes reading the chapter?" He turned back towards Anna, suddenly and stunningly beautiful in her defence of her friend, and then back to the camera. "Or will someone step in to take her place?"
Anna gasped. "No, you creep. I'm not putting my feet in that thing!"
"Okay. Fair enough." And without a moment's hesitation Ben grabbed Carrie's left foot and started to tickle again. Carrie, whose breathing had scarcely had time to slow from the first attack, squealed as her weakened resistance vaporized. This time she fell straight to laughing, and once again Anna grabbed Ben's wrist and pulled him back.
Carrie screamed from the stocks, "Stop touching me, you freak!"
Ben smiled broadly at the camera. "So Room 101 keeps doing its work, dear viewers! And only dear Anna can save poor Carrie from even more tickling, even more laughing, maybe even worse than that! What do you say, Anna?"
Anna could see that Carrie was not doing well. She hung her head. "Alright. You can tickle me."
"Oh, but Anna, that was the offer before I discovered Carrie's other foot. Now the price just got higher. Remember 1984?"
"What do you mean the price just got higher? Let her go!"
"I can't have you playing the martyr on me, Anna. So here's what's going to have to happen: Carrie is going to have to put you in those stocks, and she's going to have to hold the book."
Carrie's face sank as she realized that he was going to turn her into Winston Smith.
"And she's going to have to change into a swimsuit before we go to work on Anna."
Carrie tried to be outraged, tried to summon the righteous indignation that had come so naturally on the Internet, but the terror was undeniable: if he started to tickle her feet again, she likely would give up Anna into his hands.
"Matt, make sure Anna here doesn't interfere this time. Carrie, only one body can save yours once I start. You've read Orwell. You know what you need to say."
Matt, nearly as big as Ben and strong enough to hold Anna back from her friend, stood between Anna and the stocks, and Ben sneered at the camera before addressing Carrie: "So what do you say, Carrie? Can I have a crack at Anna?"
And with that he began to tickle her right foot again. Carrie had nothing left to fight the sensation. Her hands once more covered her own eyes as Ben's nimble fingers scratched here and there, zig-zagging one moment and raking from ball to heel the next. His thumb and forefinger made pinching motions over the surface of the nylon, and Carrie squealed as the sensations shot up her leg, warming her inner thighs and tiring her abdomen. Never much of a health nut, Carrie nonetheless had the appealing, curvy figure of a young woman who took some care of herself, and she could feel her midsection fatiguing as it might were she at the gym rather than at the hands of this tickling Trumpster. Anna tried once more to intervene, but Matt held her back. Moira continued to hold the light even though there was no book to illuminate. Carrie's laughter and protests and squeals filled up a minute of digital video, then three, and then she lost track of time as Ben switched his grip to the other foot and began to torture her left.
When she remembered this moment later, what troubled her most is that she could not remember when she made the decision to crack, to expose herself to the Internet, to betray her friend to the tickler. "Do it to her!"
"Do what to her?"
"Tickle her feet! Tickle Anna!"
"Will you hold the book for her?"
Her response was a high-pitched squeal: "Yes! Yes!"
"And will you put on a swim suit for us?"
"YES!"
Ben, whose eyes shone with triumph, released the girl's foot and unlatched the stocks. "You have four minutes to change and come back. If you're not out of your bedroom by then, we're going to start in on Anna, and there won't be any book to save her!"
Carrie began to scurry to her bedroom, and Ben addressed Jay: "Be sure that we put some sort of timer on the screen for this part of the video. Now Anna, it's time to take what's coming to you!"
Anna, who had convinced herself that she wasn't as ticklish now as she remembered being in high school, and certainly not as ticklish as Carrie, began to take off her shoes and socks. A thinner girl than Carrie, her slender ankles emerging from her jeans made Ben realize that this might be the greatest triumph of his tickling life. When her long, thin feet were in full view, Ben could scarcely stand up straight to guide her to the couch and help each leg in turn into the stocks. Anna's resolve gave way to a satisfying look of panic as he rolled up her jeans and secured her ankles in the restraints.
"You'd better hope that my clock doesn't run fast, Anna, because your feet look like they're going to be your downfall no matter what happens next."
Anna couldn't help herself; she gasped at the thought of those torturing fingers working on her soles.
Carrie emerged from her bedroom, and it was Ben's turn to gasp. Her figure, now out in the air for all to see, was sheer Greek statuary, plump in the right places and narrowing to a slender waist that gave way to a modest but nonetheless pool-ready two-piece bathing suit bottom. Her legs were nothing short of a feast for the eyes, and her feet, now bare, Ben knew as the most ticklish that he'd ever lain hands on. As appetite compounded with appetite, he couldn't help but swing his lustful gaze from Carrie's womanly riches to Anna's slender feet, then to Moira, who was nearly cowering when she realized that he could consume her at any moment.
"Well, Anna, are you ready to read for us?" He handed Carrie the book. "I'll tell you what: let's do the next chapter. It's a little bit shorter."
Carrie fumbled with the pages. "Wait just a minute, and I'll get there."
"Too slow!" And with that, Ben grabbed the top of Anna's right foot and began to tickle. She couldn't ever have been ready for such a thing, and her hands gripped the couch cushion beneath her as she screamed her surprise.
"Wait! I have to get to the page!" But Ben was not waiting; with such a slender sole he could use his four fingers to rake every part from the ball to the heel, and he did so over and over, sending Anna into what sounded like a paroxysm before she settled into a rising, tormented laughter.
In a vain gesture Carrie lunged forward, holding up the book to the beginning of Part III, chapter 5, but Anna's eyes were pinched shut in ticklish torment as she shrieked and laughed. Ben's eyes were not shut, and his eye traced a line from Carrie's arm, down her underarm to the crest of her generous breast, and then down the curve of her side to her delicious hip. He was loathe to unhand the ticklish foot in his power, but nonetheless a hand snaked out to that hip and squeezed. Carrie lost her balance, falling backwards into Ben, knocking him away from Anna. His hands shot to her underarms, and Carrie's elbows pulled in with a sudden jerk. Her scream of protest was not in any language ever heard by men, and Ben was loving it. As they reclined together in ticklish motion, his hand moved towards the bottom of her ribs, and Carrie squirmed in his grasp and screamed as he discovered that the rivers of ticklish nerves in her feet gave way to a sea of glorious, writhing flesh that was now at his power. The proud, powerful woman from the bar was now responding to every movement of his hands and wrists and fingers, and Anna's cries to leave her ticklish friend alone fell on deaf ears as the ecstasy of tickling such a treasure washed over Benjamin Nelson.
But his desire reached out once more, grasping at every possible pleasure that the moment could afford. "Moira! Start tickling Anna's feet, or you're next!" When Carrie's thrashing arms covered her belly, he squeezed a hip, and when they extended to protect her ticklish thighs, he reached under her arm to torture her underarm. Moira, now gripped by the terror of feeling what was turning her friends into such giggling thralls, bent down at Anna's feet.
"Don't do this, Moira! Don't do this!" But the terror of being tickled far outran Moira's loyalty, and she began to scratch her fingernails on Anna's soles. Benjamin Nelson was the king of the world, his body pressed against a writhing, statuesque, ticklish woman as the slender Anna provided a symphonic counterpoint of laughter. His hands could not get their fill of Carrie's smooth skin, and his ears filled with the sounds of two ticklish women, at his mercy.
Carrie's arms tried valiantly but in vain to cover up all of her ticklish spots--there were just too many, and the foot-tickling she had endured had weakened her resistance. Anna, as Moira continued to tickle her soles, lost the will to protest and just leaned to one side, bringing her feet to a strange diagonal in the stocks but not diminishing her torture in the slightest. Ben could feel that his own ability to delay his climax was about to end, and he decided to enjoy a final pleasure before he had to pack up his crew and change pants. Working his way into a crouch, still tickling Carrie with every moment, he began to study Moira's rhythm as she moved from one of Anna's feet to the other. Her tunnel vision, a product of fear and a rising pleasure at tormenting her friend's skin, didn't let her see the predator looming behind her.
With a lunge, Ben wrapped an arm around Moira's slim waist and fell backwards. Now, between two beautiful, young, liberal, ticklish women, Benjamin Nelson's hands feasted as they never before would feast: as one roamed from ticklish spot to ticklish spot on Carrie, her full laugh and delicious flesh continued to satisfy. Moira, a bundle of nervous terror, shrieked at each ticklish grab Ben made, her newly-tickled body jerking and swerving to avoid his hands, each time in vain as he grabbed her side, her knee, her underarm. Anna, recovering her strength from being foot-tickled, cursed at him and attempted to undo the latch on the stocks.
Ben knew that this moment could not last, but neither did the tension in his pants. With a moan the sheer, overwhelming pleasure of tickling two woman who hated him washed over him, and he released the two girls. He looked up at his crew and nodded. "Let's pack up, boys. This is going to make good YouTube material." They began to strike set and pack up the lights.
Carrie and Moira slowly got to their knees before standing. Anna, who had managed to release the stocks, jumped up and stood tall in front of Ben. "You can't put that on the Internet!"
Ben smirked. "What's it worth to you?"
After the World Ends (m/f)
by
Kid Indy
11 November 2016, 2:00 PM
Three days after the election, Hillary Clinton for President campaign headquarters in Columbus, Ohio was the zombie town that any losing political campaign's facility is bound to become. The day after election day most of the staff got together to commiserate but by evening had returned to homes and schools and families. Some remained longer, helping to take down signs, and as a day and two days passed, the bustling mission control became the haunt of the most forlorn janitors that Ohio had known for some time.
Carrie was among those who remained, helping to load crates onto trucks to return leased office equipment and mostly keeping quiet along with the five or six people still left in the office. Most of the other college students had returned to their classes, but Carrie had taken the semester off, she reminded herself yet again, so she had until the end of November on this short-term lease to leave. So as almost all of her comrades returned to classes and exams, Carrie set herself at least to cleaning up well after a mission that had not succeeded.
As she pushed a broom across a floor that had been busy with eager campaigners a mere week before, her phone vibrated, and she immediately stood the broom up with one hand and reached to her pocket with the other. She gasped as the glowing screen reminded her:
TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT. SEE YOU ON CAMPUS
* * * * * *
31 October 2016, 7:00 PM
The senior staffers, campaigners with grandchildren at home waiting to go trick-or-treating, gave the interns Halloween night off, and Carrie Norwood needed a night off. Her Kenyon professors had tried to dissuade her from leaving college for the fall semester, but she heard the call to fight off the barbarian at the gate, and she had put in seventy-hour weeks since the beginning of September. She had walked neighborhoods, made polling and fundraising calls, and done everything that a presidential campaign in a swing state has to do, and here, nine days out from the first woman president's inauguration, she agreed to go out with the girls for some premature celebration.
Despite weeks of campaign-eating (a diet of pizza and other junk), Carrie fit into her flapper dress like a dream, and looking in her mirror, she knew it. She adjusted a black-feather-adorned headband in her hair, dyed a bright green. She knew that bit was an anachronism, but she was trolling college boys, not working as a movie extra, and she knew just how little they would be looking at her hair when this much of her legs greeted their eyes. A group of six campaign interns and other workers were going out to an Ohio State bar, and Carrie knew that they didn't see this coming. She twirled her feather boa and swivelled her hips, making herself laugh as she got ready to hit the town.
At the Ohio State bar, the Clinton chicks (that's what they had decided to call themselves, as they walked the town) got a table, ordered the first round, and enjoyed the sensation of being the new girls in town. Young men in OSU sweatshirts turned their heads to look at the six new faces in the bar, and most of them went beyond to enjoy the tight-costumed bodies and legs that came with them. The first one brave enough to venture a come-on got to be an example for the rest: the pack of girls laughed in his face, ridiculing the attempt and signalling to the bar that this table was for looking but not touching. Two rounds gave way to four, and they became louder as the evening wore on.
But their own laughter at each other's jokes soon gave way to an overwhelming noise: five men, perhaps in their mid-twenties or late twenties, burst through the door roaring at one of their own jokes. Immediately every eye in the place went to the men too old to be trolling college girls and to the bright red caps that they sported. Most of the drinkers assumed that Make America Great Again was just a dumb costume and went back to what they were doing.
Carrie had drunk just enough that she wasn't going to let that pass as a costume.
* * * * * *
11 November 2016, 2:01 PM
THE GIRLS HAVE ALL GONE HOME. NOT COMING ALONE.
WE'LL COME TO KENYON, THEN. A BET'S A BET
I CAN'T DO THIS AT KENYON I'LL GET KICKED OUT
THEN TELL THEM TO COME BACK TO COLUMBUS FOR ONE NIGHT
* * * * * *
31 October 2016, 11:30 PM
"Carrie! What are you doing? Get back over here!"
But she was already standing toe to toe with one of the men.
"That man-child Trump isn't going to make anything great, you jerk!"
The other men in caps looked away, but the tall ringleader stared right back into Carrie's eyes. He spoke with an even voice, perhaps a bit too loud from the bar before.
"We'll just have to see when he wins this thing and throws out all of the old guard."
Carrie's eyes flashed at the challenge. "That racist piece of crap isn't throwing anyone out, and I'm here in Columbus to make sure that never happens!"
The man smiled. "Ah, so you're a campaign worker, huh? Me too!" At this point Carrie's friends from the campaign office had made their way to her sides, so that the Clinton crew and the Trump crew stood toe to toe, a sad imitation of a Western-movie standoff. "I hate to tell you, but the Clinton years ended when you were in diapers, and they're not coming back!"
Carrie's mind spun as she decided not to correct him and place herself in grade school in 2001. "You've got to be kidding me! You're as delusional as Donald Trump is! Have you seen the poll numbers?"
"Those pollsters don't know what they're talking about. Our people are out in the small towns and up in the Cleveland neighborhoods, and we're going to take Ohio right out of your establishment hands!"
"You wanna bet?"
"What do you have to bet with?"
Carrie was getting louder, and as her skin flushed, more than one pair of eyes in the bar found her more and more attractive as her convictions made her bolder and bolder. "When Hillary Clinton wins the White House, you have to read the epilogue to Handmaid's Tale out loud, and I'm putting it on YouTube for everyone to see!"
"And what if Trump wins?"
"He's not going to!"
The man gave a sly look. "How about this? If Trump wins, you have to read the "You have to love Big Brother" chapter from 1984 out loud, and I'll put that on YouTube." Both gangs of campaign workers were cheering at this point at the test of political confidence.
Carrie turned to her friends, then back to the big Trump supporter. "You've got a deal!"
* * * * * *
11 November 2016, 7:43 PM
Carrie's friends Moira and Anna met her at her apartment and waited. All three were still in shock at what had happened with the election and outraged at the rising hate-crime in the days after, but now they feared not for minorities they'd only briefly met but for their friend Carrie. The man, Benjamin Nelson by the contact he had left on her phone, would be coming with two of his friends, and he would be putting his hands on Carrie. Anna, working out her worry verbally, pulled her phone from her pocket. Next to the pants-suited Carrie, Moira's leggings and long-sleeved t-shirt and Anna's jeans and sweatshirt were decidedly underdressed for the evening.
"We should call the police before they get here."
Moira scowled. "And tell them what? That we lost a bet with some Trump campaign staffers? You realize how weird that's going to sound?"
Carrie, overdressed in her job-interview suit next to her sweatshirt-clad friends, who had not spoken much, said quietly, "I can't believe she lost the state and the election."
Anna shrugged. "We had the polls in our favor. There's no way you could have known!"
Before they could start rehashing the election again, they heard a loud knock at Carrie's apartment door. When Carrie opened the door Ben, along with two of his friends from the bar, strode confidently into the apartment, arms full of what looked like lighting equipment. "Alright! Pant-suit nation returns! I've been looking forward to this, Carrie, I really have."
Anna tried to seem brave. "Where's your book? Let's get this done."
"Patience, patience! I'm going to need help from you two." Moira and Anna looked at each other and back at Ben.
"What do you want from us?"
* * * * * *
31 October 2016, 11:32 PM
The pack of girls began to return to her table. Carrie's slightly-inebriated confidence was soaring when the Trump campaign staffer shouted to her turned back.
"But that's not all that exciting, is it? What if we go double or nothing on Ohio?"
"What?"
"It wouldn't be all that satisfying if Trump won Pennsylvania but lost Ohio, so what do you say we up the stakes if Clinton wins Ohio and the White House?"
At this point Carrie was in too deep to back down. A nearby TV, tuned to ESPN, had gone to a commercial break, an ad for the district's GOP candidate for the House. In the ad he was visiting a local farmer. Glancing at that commercial, then turning her eyes to burn a hole in the Trumpster's forehead, she growled, "When Clinton wins Ohio and the White House, I want you to read the epilogue to Atwood--while wearing a prom dress in a hog pen!"
At that the Clinton gang hooted in approval, and even the Trump staffers laughed at the prospect of their ringleader's humiliation.
The tall man merely grinned as a chess player might grin when seizing center-board. "And when Trump wins Ohio and the White House, you're going to read the "You must love Big Brother" scene wearing a pants suit... while I tickle your feet."
Suddenly the color went out of Carrie's face. The feathers draped over her shoulder suddenly became the center of her attention, and she scanned the room around her. The Trump staffers were hooting at the prospect, and at her left and right her friends laughed at the prospect. Carrie froze; she could not imagine letting a stranger tickle her, but now to back down would be to yield this scene to a man who represented what she hated most. She set her jaw and extended her hand.
"Deal!"
They shook, and their friends watched as each gave the other a phone number to call once time came to collect on the bet.
* * * * * *
11 November 2016, 7:48 PM
Ben had the look of a cat toying with a mouse as he looked from girl to girl, settling his eyes on Carrie. "Oh, nothing too difficult. One of you needs to hold the book and the other a light so that Carrie can see what she's reading." As he spoke his counterparts extended telescoping legs on a tripod, set up some much larger portable video lighting, and prepared to make the clip something the Internet could enjoy. Carrie's friends reluctantly agreed.
One of Ben's friends went back outside and came back with a large, heavy-looking wooden frame. Anna shook her head and pointed. "There is NO WAY she's putting her feet in that."
Ben laughed at the protest. "She made the bet, didn't you, Carrie? You wouldn't have backed down if I had said I wouldn't wear THAT dress, would you?"
Moira jumped in. "But she won't be able to move her feet! Those are stocks!"
"Right on both counts--what was your name?"
"Moira."
"You see, Moira, that's what's going to make this video awesome. Now are you holding the book or the reading light?" He turned to one of his companions. "Jay, are we about ready?" Jay, a tall man with broad shoulders, was already moving the stocks in front of the apartment's lone couch, and he nodded his readiness. "Alright, Carrie. It's time to pay up on your bet. Sit on the couch and put your feet in the stocks!" Carrie, attempting to muster some dignity, sat and lifted one leg, then the other, to the padded wooden semi-circles. Jay secured the stocks, then returned to his place behind the camera. The third man, still unnamed, adjusted lights.
Ben sat on the couch next to the restrained Carrie and put on his best video personality. "Hello, Internet!" Carrie's eyes rolled as her disdain clashed with her fear. "This is Ben Nelson, and I'm here with Carrie, a friend I met during campaign season. As you can tell from the pantsuit, Carrie was hoping that Hillary Clinton would be our next president, but now she's one of the sad liberals who needs a safe space."
Carrie's face had curled into a snarl as she became a living, breathing Internet meme. Ben continued.
"But we're here to help her! Remember books, Internet? Those places where ideas still hide out while liberals like Carrie post about their microaggressions on Twitter? Well, we're going to let Carrie remember one of the great ones today and help her see what Donald Trump has saved so many Americans from. So, without further adieu, here's Carrie, Clinton campaign staffer, reading from George Orwell's 1984!"
He signaled to Anna to hold the copy of Orwell and to Moira to illuminate the page, which was a silhouette, from where Carrie sat, against the bright set lights. Nervously Carrie began: "He was much better. He was growing fatter and stronger every day, if it was proper to speak of days." Her voice started to rise in pitch as she felt Ben slowly remove her right shoe. As she continued reading, she felt the apartment's cool air on both soles and stuttered just a bit as she heard the shoes both hit the floor. She looked away from the book and stopped reading. "No, wait! I can't do--"
Her protest rose to a shriek as Ben began to scratch at the nylon hose covering her right foot. He realized in a second's time that he really had struck gold here: even the light touches of his fingertips made Carrie's hips buck off the couch, and as she tried to sit up and cover her feet with her hands, a quick scrabble down the sole made her lurch backwards, nearly knocking Moira over, as another ticklish scream came out of her. Setting himself up for some more sustained tickling, Ben grabbed Carrie's toes and pulled them backwards, towards the stock, and she tried to sit up again, her hands this time folding together in some parody of prayer before his other hand began to scratch at her heel. Without any leverage to escape, Carrie simply thrashed as Moira tried to jump clear and Anna strove valiantly to call to her and encourage her to read more of the chapter. Carrie's hands covered her face in humiliation as her scream turned into a moan and fought against the laugh that wanted so badly to emerge from her abdomen.
Ben knew better: no amount of pride was going to last long against the raw reality of ticklish skin, nylon hose, and a persistent pervert like him, and Carrie's feet were no normal extremities. With only one hand working on only one foot, Ben was sure that he could reduce the proud, boasting woman from the bar to begging in minutes, maybe less, and his fingers did his libido's bidding on her sole, then her heel, then the ball of her foot.
Anna, in a moment of nobility, grabbed at Ben's wrist and pulled his hand away from Carrie's foot, giving her a moment to breathe.
Ben, taken aback for a moment, had a laugh of his own. "Now Anna, you were there when Carrie made this bet. She's got to finish this chapter, and you'd better let her!" He glanced back at the camera and licked his lips as he realized that the Internet was going to see the coming drama play out.
"Look, you jerk, she can't read while you're doing that! Just let her go!"
"Room 101 doesn't just let people go, Anna. Room 101 is where the worst thing in the world happens!"
"Just stop with the dramatic crap, Ben! She can't read when you're doing that to her!"
Ben turned and looked into the camera. "Well, Internet, is she right? Is Carrie doomed to be tickled to death before she finishes reading the chapter?" He turned back towards Anna, suddenly and stunningly beautiful in her defence of her friend, and then back to the camera. "Or will someone step in to take her place?"
Anna gasped. "No, you creep. I'm not putting my feet in that thing!"
"Okay. Fair enough." And without a moment's hesitation Ben grabbed Carrie's left foot and started to tickle again. Carrie, whose breathing had scarcely had time to slow from the first attack, squealed as her weakened resistance vaporized. This time she fell straight to laughing, and once again Anna grabbed Ben's wrist and pulled him back.
Carrie screamed from the stocks, "Stop touching me, you freak!"
Ben smiled broadly at the camera. "So Room 101 keeps doing its work, dear viewers! And only dear Anna can save poor Carrie from even more tickling, even more laughing, maybe even worse than that! What do you say, Anna?"
Anna could see that Carrie was not doing well. She hung her head. "Alright. You can tickle me."
"Oh, but Anna, that was the offer before I discovered Carrie's other foot. Now the price just got higher. Remember 1984?"
"What do you mean the price just got higher? Let her go!"
"I can't have you playing the martyr on me, Anna. So here's what's going to have to happen: Carrie is going to have to put you in those stocks, and she's going to have to hold the book."
Carrie's face sank as she realized that he was going to turn her into Winston Smith.
"And she's going to have to change into a swimsuit before we go to work on Anna."
Carrie tried to be outraged, tried to summon the righteous indignation that had come so naturally on the Internet, but the terror was undeniable: if he started to tickle her feet again, she likely would give up Anna into his hands.
"Matt, make sure Anna here doesn't interfere this time. Carrie, only one body can save yours once I start. You've read Orwell. You know what you need to say."
Matt, nearly as big as Ben and strong enough to hold Anna back from her friend, stood between Anna and the stocks, and Ben sneered at the camera before addressing Carrie: "So what do you say, Carrie? Can I have a crack at Anna?"
And with that he began to tickle her right foot again. Carrie had nothing left to fight the sensation. Her hands once more covered her own eyes as Ben's nimble fingers scratched here and there, zig-zagging one moment and raking from ball to heel the next. His thumb and forefinger made pinching motions over the surface of the nylon, and Carrie squealed as the sensations shot up her leg, warming her inner thighs and tiring her abdomen. Never much of a health nut, Carrie nonetheless had the appealing, curvy figure of a young woman who took some care of herself, and she could feel her midsection fatiguing as it might were she at the gym rather than at the hands of this tickling Trumpster. Anna tried once more to intervene, but Matt held her back. Moira continued to hold the light even though there was no book to illuminate. Carrie's laughter and protests and squeals filled up a minute of digital video, then three, and then she lost track of time as Ben switched his grip to the other foot and began to torture her left.
When she remembered this moment later, what troubled her most is that she could not remember when she made the decision to crack, to expose herself to the Internet, to betray her friend to the tickler. "Do it to her!"
"Do what to her?"
"Tickle her feet! Tickle Anna!"
"Will you hold the book for her?"
Her response was a high-pitched squeal: "Yes! Yes!"
"And will you put on a swim suit for us?"
"YES!"
Ben, whose eyes shone with triumph, released the girl's foot and unlatched the stocks. "You have four minutes to change and come back. If you're not out of your bedroom by then, we're going to start in on Anna, and there won't be any book to save her!"
Carrie began to scurry to her bedroom, and Ben addressed Jay: "Be sure that we put some sort of timer on the screen for this part of the video. Now Anna, it's time to take what's coming to you!"
Anna, who had convinced herself that she wasn't as ticklish now as she remembered being in high school, and certainly not as ticklish as Carrie, began to take off her shoes and socks. A thinner girl than Carrie, her slender ankles emerging from her jeans made Ben realize that this might be the greatest triumph of his tickling life. When her long, thin feet were in full view, Ben could scarcely stand up straight to guide her to the couch and help each leg in turn into the stocks. Anna's resolve gave way to a satisfying look of panic as he rolled up her jeans and secured her ankles in the restraints.
"You'd better hope that my clock doesn't run fast, Anna, because your feet look like they're going to be your downfall no matter what happens next."
Anna couldn't help herself; she gasped at the thought of those torturing fingers working on her soles.
Carrie emerged from her bedroom, and it was Ben's turn to gasp. Her figure, now out in the air for all to see, was sheer Greek statuary, plump in the right places and narrowing to a slender waist that gave way to a modest but nonetheless pool-ready two-piece bathing suit bottom. Her legs were nothing short of a feast for the eyes, and her feet, now bare, Ben knew as the most ticklish that he'd ever lain hands on. As appetite compounded with appetite, he couldn't help but swing his lustful gaze from Carrie's womanly riches to Anna's slender feet, then to Moira, who was nearly cowering when she realized that he could consume her at any moment.
"Well, Anna, are you ready to read for us?" He handed Carrie the book. "I'll tell you what: let's do the next chapter. It's a little bit shorter."
Carrie fumbled with the pages. "Wait just a minute, and I'll get there."
"Too slow!" And with that, Ben grabbed the top of Anna's right foot and began to tickle. She couldn't ever have been ready for such a thing, and her hands gripped the couch cushion beneath her as she screamed her surprise.
"Wait! I have to get to the page!" But Ben was not waiting; with such a slender sole he could use his four fingers to rake every part from the ball to the heel, and he did so over and over, sending Anna into what sounded like a paroxysm before she settled into a rising, tormented laughter.
In a vain gesture Carrie lunged forward, holding up the book to the beginning of Part III, chapter 5, but Anna's eyes were pinched shut in ticklish torment as she shrieked and laughed. Ben's eyes were not shut, and his eye traced a line from Carrie's arm, down her underarm to the crest of her generous breast, and then down the curve of her side to her delicious hip. He was loathe to unhand the ticklish foot in his power, but nonetheless a hand snaked out to that hip and squeezed. Carrie lost her balance, falling backwards into Ben, knocking him away from Anna. His hands shot to her underarms, and Carrie's elbows pulled in with a sudden jerk. Her scream of protest was not in any language ever heard by men, and Ben was loving it. As they reclined together in ticklish motion, his hand moved towards the bottom of her ribs, and Carrie squirmed in his grasp and screamed as he discovered that the rivers of ticklish nerves in her feet gave way to a sea of glorious, writhing flesh that was now at his power. The proud, powerful woman from the bar was now responding to every movement of his hands and wrists and fingers, and Anna's cries to leave her ticklish friend alone fell on deaf ears as the ecstasy of tickling such a treasure washed over Benjamin Nelson.
But his desire reached out once more, grasping at every possible pleasure that the moment could afford. "Moira! Start tickling Anna's feet, or you're next!" When Carrie's thrashing arms covered her belly, he squeezed a hip, and when they extended to protect her ticklish thighs, he reached under her arm to torture her underarm. Moira, now gripped by the terror of feeling what was turning her friends into such giggling thralls, bent down at Anna's feet.
"Don't do this, Moira! Don't do this!" But the terror of being tickled far outran Moira's loyalty, and she began to scratch her fingernails on Anna's soles. Benjamin Nelson was the king of the world, his body pressed against a writhing, statuesque, ticklish woman as the slender Anna provided a symphonic counterpoint of laughter. His hands could not get their fill of Carrie's smooth skin, and his ears filled with the sounds of two ticklish women, at his mercy.
Carrie's arms tried valiantly but in vain to cover up all of her ticklish spots--there were just too many, and the foot-tickling she had endured had weakened her resistance. Anna, as Moira continued to tickle her soles, lost the will to protest and just leaned to one side, bringing her feet to a strange diagonal in the stocks but not diminishing her torture in the slightest. Ben could feel that his own ability to delay his climax was about to end, and he decided to enjoy a final pleasure before he had to pack up his crew and change pants. Working his way into a crouch, still tickling Carrie with every moment, he began to study Moira's rhythm as she moved from one of Anna's feet to the other. Her tunnel vision, a product of fear and a rising pleasure at tormenting her friend's skin, didn't let her see the predator looming behind her.
With a lunge, Ben wrapped an arm around Moira's slim waist and fell backwards. Now, between two beautiful, young, liberal, ticklish women, Benjamin Nelson's hands feasted as they never before would feast: as one roamed from ticklish spot to ticklish spot on Carrie, her full laugh and delicious flesh continued to satisfy. Moira, a bundle of nervous terror, shrieked at each ticklish grab Ben made, her newly-tickled body jerking and swerving to avoid his hands, each time in vain as he grabbed her side, her knee, her underarm. Anna, recovering her strength from being foot-tickled, cursed at him and attempted to undo the latch on the stocks.
Ben knew that this moment could not last, but neither did the tension in his pants. With a moan the sheer, overwhelming pleasure of tickling two woman who hated him washed over him, and he released the two girls. He looked up at his crew and nodded. "Let's pack up, boys. This is going to make good YouTube material." They began to strike set and pack up the lights.
Carrie and Moira slowly got to their knees before standing. Anna, who had managed to release the stocks, jumped up and stood tall in front of Ben. "You can't put that on the Internet!"
Ben smirked. "What's it worth to you?"
