By the year 2017, the worldwide devastation caused by treatment-resistant viruses called for drastic measures if the human race was to survive. The U.S. responded aggressively by adding Solution 9 to every potable water source. The drug’s beneficial effect on the immune system was so great that any side effects were negligible by comparison. In fact, the only side effect universally experienced was a reduction in ticklishness. Within a short period of ingesting the drug on a daily basis, Americans—soon to be followed by the rest of the world—found that ticklishness had virtually vanished from the population.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buckled securely into his car, Wade drove the twelve hundred miles up the coast to Robert and Sloan’s place. The trip took nearly thirty minutes, due to roadwork on Route 67610Z that held traffic down to fifty lanes. The delay didn’t help Wade’s anxiety; his heart seemed about to burst.

The exit took him a hundred more miles into the countryside, where the towers were spaced so widely apart he could see green grass in places. He didn’t know why anyone would want to live so far from the center of the Urban Core, but then again the couple he was going to meet were…probably a bit eccentric. Was he making a mistake by going to their home instead of meeting them in a public place? He had already taken a chance by using the illegal and unreliable Internet to try to find someone who wanted what he had to offer. He was surprised that a couple had responded, and wondered how many more surprises lay ahead of him.

Robert and Sloan lived in a pod on the 125th floor of a tower that stood by itself on an access road. Robert answered Wade’s knock and introduced himself, swinging the door wide. Sloan stood right behind him. Another surprise, but a pleasant one: both men were wearing only undertunics. And they were beautiful, their bodies sculptured, nourished, and pampered to perfection. Robert, the one Wade has spoken with the most, had wide-set eyes and an open, welcoming expression; Sloan was serious-looking, with piercing brown eyes and sensual lips that seemed to put a lot of effort into trying to smile. They were both putting forth effort, trying to hide their nervous excitement. Of course they wanted to touch Wade—couldn’t wait to touch him. That fact alone, in a time when touching between near-strangers didn’t often occur, charged the air with tension.

“Happy to meet you,” Robert said, his tentative smile flickering as he showed Wade into their main room. It had a light blue glow, and was larger than Wade had expected, with many shelves of discs and chips. Rather than take the offered seat, Wade stood by the shelves, compulsively reading the titles. One item stood out: an ancient paperbound book, yellowed pages held together with an old-fashioned rubber band. When Wade saw the faded blue-and-white cover that he had never seen before, only read about, he nearly fainted.

“Where—where did you get this?” he asked.

“Oh, it took us years to track it down,” Sloan said. “You wouldn’t believe what we had to pay for it. It was worth it, though.”

Wade couldn’t resist taking a closer look. “May I?” He removed the rubber band very carefully. He opened to a page at random, and though he wasn’t used to reading things on paper, the words practically leaped off the page. He read aloud:

 In no time I was tightly stretched, tied down and blindfolded again. I knew that whatever he had done to me before was now going to be ten times worse, but it turned out I was wrong. It was a hundred times worse. His tickling was relentless, keeping me in such steady laughter that I couldn’t speak. Even when he stopped to lotion up my feet for the widowmaker, I couldn’t beg for mercy because I was panting so hard. Those bristles ground into my soles again and I was screaming, a steady hoarsening wail that rose in intensity like a siren gone haywire, taking all my breath, threatening to burst my own eardrums. I screamed for what seemed like forever as he scrubbed my slickened feet all over with those bristles, and I was no longer tied to a bed but floating, suspended in endless space, kept aloft by nothing but agony.

“Oh, fuck.” Wade’s knees were shaking, and so were his hands—he nearly dropped the book. “I have to sit down.” He stepped back until his legs hit the edge of a chair, and sat down heavily. “I read about this book on the Internet, but I didn’t think it was real.” He smiled and handed it to Sloan. “I don’t think I’d better read any more of it. Not right now, anyway.”

“I’m curious,” Sloan said. “What did it make you think of?”

It made him think of Dr. Clement, of course it did. But he wasn’t ready to talk about that—not to these two strangers, anyway. Even now, two years later, it made him shudder—with horror and, yes, desire—as he recalled the exam table, the restraints, and the doctor who, having found a ticklish patient for the first time, couldn’t stop exploring. Looking back, Wade couldn’t blame the doctor, knowing what he knew now—that tickling could be an overwhelming erotic obsession, all the more so because Solution 9 had removed the trait from the human race. The last ticklish men had died off some time ago, so that men who fantasized about tickling other men were left with nothing more than that: fantasies. Sometimes it could be a bond, as it was with Robert and Sloan, two ticklephiles who had formed a relationship based on their obsession—even though, as far as Wade knew, neither had ever gotten his hands on a ticklish male. Still, they had hoped, and hope had paid off. They had found that man, that one in ten billion, who had been born with a ticklishness that Solution 9 couldn’t take away.

Lost in his thoughts, Wade looked up suddenly to find that Robert and Sloan were observing him closely. It was a relief when Robert asked, “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Is there relaxing water?”

Sloan brought the water in a tall glass filled with ice. Wade took a sip, surreptitiously sniffing at the water first to make sure it didn’t contain anything more than what he’d asked for. A nagging voice in the back of his head kept telling him that anything was possible. These two could drug him, take him somewhere and keep him there, even make him their prisoner in this very pod…. But Wade’s imagination couldn’t be trusted either, for it twisted the most sensible warnings into erotic scenarios that made his dickhead press against his undertunic till it almost hurt. There was something else, too, working against the nagging voice. It was…what would he call it…the demeanor of these guys. They were so serious, their faces drawn and somber, no longer forcing smiles. Wade couldn’t imagine them indulging in sadistic fantasies, grinning in twisted glee.

Sipping his water, thinking about these things, Wade was almost startled when Sloan asked, “Shall we go downstairs?” He pointed toward a door Wade hadn’t noticed. A private lift?

Frowning at his husband, Robert said, “There’s no hurry. He just got here.”

Sloan nodded slowly. “Oh, yes,” he said, the strain showing in the corners of his mouth. “Yes, there is a hurry.”

Wade looked from Sloan to Robert and back again, and nervous laughter burst out of him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not laughing at you, not really. It’s just that…I can see by the bulges in your underwear how excited you are. By the look in your eyes, for that matter.” He set his water aside—it had helped to loosen him up. “I was getting hard myself, just reading one paragraph out of that book….”

“We could tell,” Sloan said. “I mean, we could tell you were the real thing. Are the real thing.”

“How could you tell?” Wade needed more of the water after all. He took a few more gulps, draining the glass. “I could be a fake. You haven’t even…touched me yet.”

“Oh, it was obvious, when you were reading aloud,” Robert said. “It made you…shudder.”

“Yes,” Sloan said, drawing near. He reached out with both hands to lightly touch Wade’s shoulders. “Yes, just like that! You shuddered.”

Wade laughed again. Just the light touch of Sloan’s fingers on his shoulders made him want to squirm. “I guess I did.”

“Let’s go downstairs,” Sloan said.

Wade understood Sloan’s urgency. The future was rushing at them, and they had to meet it. Still… “I—I’m not sure I’m ready.”

“Oh, we understand!” they both said at once, as if they’d rehearsed it. They stood like chastened boys, their hands behind their backs. “No pressure at all,” Robert said. “We don’t have to do anything.”

“You have a great laugh,” Sloan said. There were tears in his eyes. Wade hadn’t seen anything like that since Dr. Clement had smiled at him through tears.

Downstairs was the lab where Sloan worked, seeking allergy remedies. Wade had promised himself that he wouldn’t touch anything. But Robert and Sloan had made no such promise: even on the lift they had begun to handle him, gently, staring into his eyes as they pressed their hands into his sides. Unnerved, he laughed out of surprise more than anything else. A thought crossed his mind: if these guys had never tickled anyone, then would they be good at it? A thrill of anticipation coursed up his spine: of course they would. It wasn’t something you had to learn how to do.

The lab was larger than he expected, taking up a complete floor of the tower. Workspaces and cabinets and shelving stretched on and on, as if a legion of scientists worked here. On work surfaces computers blinked and hummed—the largest computers Wade had ever seen, some of them taking up a square foot or more. Instead of stale chemicals, a heady mix of natural scents filled the air: herbs and spices and mints, flavors of the earth. Passing down a wide aisle, past glass columns filled with pale liquids, and strange-looking spigots that produced—what? Gas? Water? Fire?—he found himself weakening, felt his knees might give out. He actually stumbled, but Robert and Sloan were at his side, keeping him from falling. Holding him fast, they led him gently but firmly onward, toward his fate.

“This is the exam room.”

It wasn’t like an exam room at a doctor’s office, it was far too spacious for that. There were floating beds, machines with strange-looking blades and spikes, contrivances and fittings. The intimidation factor was huge. Wade stood before the largest bed, the one in the center of the room, and it moved, nudging his legs like a pet. There was room all around the bed—plenty of room to allow the “examiners” to move wherever they wanted to. The bed lacked restraints, but that fact didn’t make him feel any less nervous. His head swam, with a dizziness that couldn’t be attributed to the relaxing water.

Robert cleared his throat. “Wade, do you mind if we film this?”

His response was automatic: “Film what?” A familiar warmth came to his face, his cheeks reddening. “Oh.”

“It’s an historic occasion,” Sloan said, unsmiling. “There are men who would pay a fortune to be able to watch it.”

Wade’s heart beat faster, he thought he might lose his breath. “Oh….”

Robert shot his partner a look. “That’s not why we want to film. It’s just…for us,” he added weakly.

Wade sank down onto the edge of the bed. He raised a hand to his eyes. “That’s fine,” he said. “It’s…fine.”

“Are you okay?” Sloan asked.

They moved closer. Because Sloan had summoned them, about a dozen thumbnail cameras darted through the air, getting ready to film the scene from their different perspectives. “I’m okay,” Wade said. Though he was nearly overwhelmed by a sense of unreality, as if he might wake up to the real world at any moment, there was a part of him that didn’t care. He stripped, laying his clothes on a chair, setting his sandals underneath it. When he turned to face his hosts they were naked too, and all three of them were erect—almost painfully so. “I feel like a teenager again,” Wade said. “Look.” He held out his trembling hands.

“We’ll take good care of you, promise,” Sloan said, passing his hand over the smooth surface of the bed in a gesture that was meant to be reassuring, even as his eyes roamed hungrily over Wade. Wade had to laugh again.

“You’ll be laughing a lot more than that,” Robert said, “in just a few seconds.” His voice was hoarse with desire.

More lightheaded than ever, from the water, the circumstances, and the overwhelming desire that seemed to tickle the very air of the room, Wade lay down on the bed and stretched himself out. Closed his eyes for a moment, tried to believe he was at home in his own bed, ready for a hot jackoff session and then sleep.

The next time he looked up, Robert was standing over him with a gun in his hand. For a split second Wade saw it, just like they said—his life flashing before his eyes.

Sensing his alarm, Robert stepped back. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess you haven’t seen one of these before. It’s a restraint gun.”

“No, I haven’t seen one before. How does it work?”

“Just aim and shoot, and it ‘ties’ a laser beam around you, attaching to whatever surface you’re on. You don’t even feel it against your skin, but you sure can’t move.”

“Do you have to have a permit for that?”

“Oh, yes.” Robert grinned. “I forgot to tell you, I’m a cop.”

“What he means is, he works for the police department,” Sloan said. “He’s a software engineer, not a cop.”

Robert moved around the bed, applying the laser restraints to Wade’s ankles and wrists as he lay in a spread eagle position. It was true, the thin bands of light bound him as securely as any ropes could. After a brief conference, Robert and Sloan decided to add four more restraints, to his legs just above the knees and his arms just above the elbows. When they were finished Wade couldn’t move his limbs, not even a tiny bit. He marveled at how helpless he felt, how defenseless he’d be against anything these men wanted to do.

“Now,” Robert said, “I’m going to bind each of your toes, tying them off to your ankle restraints. That way you won’t be able to flex your feet, and we’ll be able to get between your toes.”

That cold-blooded explanation made Wade draw a sharp breath, but he didn’t object. Using the laser tool, Robert sketched bands of light around each of Wade’s toes, holding them tautly upright and connecting them with the ankle restraints. Again Wade had to marvel at how helpless he was, his soles and toes cruelly exposed. He could even feel the air between his toes! Panic rose from his belly to his throat, choking him, convincing him he’d made a fatal mistake by surrendering to two men who were so strong and hungry. Yet all three of them were enraptured. His throat opened again, he breathed deeply. The helplessness of his situation was…so erotic…. As he shifted his pelvis the tiny bit that the restraints would allow, the weight of his erection swung around, leaking pre-cum onto the fine hairs of his belly.

“Here.” Robert approached the head of the table. “Turn your hands, palms facing up. Now splay your fingers. That’s it.”

“What are you doing now?” Wade asked.

Robert used the gun, securing Wade’s fingers and thumbs till he couldn’t move his hands at all. “Oh, we’ll get between your fingers, too,” he said. “And your palms. I’ll bet they’re very ticklish.”

Wade moaned. This was so much more than what he’d imagined….

Suddenly Sloan came to his side and dropped to his knees, his face startlingly close, his breath hot against Wade’s ear. “I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” he whispered. “You’re going to feel how long I’ve been waiting. You’re mine now, and I’ll make you suffer like you’ve never suffered before. You’ll pray for death…!”

As Sloan continued his litany of threats Wade could hardly follow. His heart was beating so fast that its rhythm flooded his senses, pounded in his ears. But certain words came through clearly enough to have their desired effect. Torture…unbearable agony…insanity…. Each word sent fresh waves of dread through Wade’s body, but something else as well: a fierce longing that was already snatching his breath away, and a certainty that if one fingertip touched his body, he would explode.

Sloan was finished now, standing tall, his cock dripping. Wade watched as a pearl of precum formed at its tip and formed a strand, like a spider’s web, down to the side of the bed. And just like that an inspiration came. Wait! Wait, now! Suppose—unthinkable, yes, but just suppose—that he wasn’t ticklish after all! Two years had passed since Dr. Clement had tied him down to his exam table, and bodies change all the time. Maybe Solution 9’s side effect had finally kicked in, and he wasn’t ticklish anymore!

He opened his eyes, not even knowing when he had closed them. His two would-be tormentors stood on either side of him, breathing heavily through open mouths, chests rising and falling, taut bellies expanding and contracting, their excitement almost too obscene to bear witness to.

Wade tried to clear his throat. “Listen,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper. “Listen to me.”

Robert and Sloan exchanged a quick, nervous glance. Was their precious victim changing his mind?

“I need to tell you…I’m not ticklish.”

Another glance traded.

“I…lied to you. I’m sorry.”

Robert and Sloan turned to each other for more than a glance. As their eyes held each other’s, the two men broke into wide grins. Sloan turned his grin toward Wade and said, “You’re going to pay for that, my friend.”

“Oh, no!” Wade said. “You don’t believe me?”

“No,” Sloan said, and now he and Robert couldn’t keep their laughter in. “Somehow we just don’t believe you!”

Wade couldn’t keep a straight face either. He was afraid to laugh but he couldn’t help it, and now the three of them laughed, out of nervousness and glee, the sense that they were embarking on something truly outrageous. Wade’s laughter rose in pitch as four trembling hands reached out to him.

It was up to Robert to say, “Wait. Wait, wait, wait.”

Exasperated, Sloan let loose another peal of nervous laughter. “What…?”

“We have to set up a safe word.”

“Awww,” Sloan said, wiping a tear from his eye. “Do we have to?”

“What do you think, Wade?” Robert asked.

Wade was in a fever. He couldn’t hold in his nervous laughter, even as he grew short of breath. He wanted the unspeakable torment to begin, and he wanted to run away. Feared for his life, yet craved the worst. It wouldn’t have surprised him if, when he opened his mouth, he spoke in two voices, one willing, one profoundly afraid. But the frightened—or maybe sensible?—part of him won out. “Yes,” he managed to say. “A safe word.”

“How about ‘artichoke’?” Robert asked.

Sloan frowned. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s an ancient vegetable.”

“Okay,” Wade said, not wanting to postpone the inevitable another second. “When I say ‘artichoke,’ you have to stop.” He grinned at Sloan, who looked nearly grief-stricken. “I’ll do my best not to use it, though.”

“All right,” Robert breathed, extending trembling fingers toward Wade’s feet. “On the count of three. One….” Sloan, standing with his fingers hovering just above Wade’s ribs, picked up the count. “Two…three!”

If they had never tickled a man before, except in their dreams—never touched responsive skin, or tested the difference between gentle and ruthless strokes, or explored the endless subtleties between teasing and annihilation—then they had learned a lot from those dreams, and from the countless hours spent with the old books and film clips. Their fingertips picked up where the history of tickling had left off, like voices taking up a song that had waited centuries to be heard.

The results were even sweeter than they’d hoped for: Wade’s skin seemed to leap to their touch as they brought the tickling to an unbearable pitch and kept it there. Bug-eyed and panting, dicks drooling, they were barely able to tear their eyes away from Wade’s body to glance at each other now and then, lock onto each other’s gaze long enough to affirm that, yes, this was really happening—happening to all three of them—and it would change their lives forever.

Wade howled and, when he could get words out, begged for mercy. He begged as he had begged Dr. Clement—not thinking of words, just letting them go, an automatic stream of supplication. The safe word lay at the back of his throat, and he struggled with all his might not to pitch it forward; the moment might come when it would burst out of him on its own, like the promises that burst from him now along with his pleading, the things he would do if his torturers would only stop. Oh, how good he’d make them feel, sucking their cocks, fucking them blind! He’d be their sex slave forever, if only…! The futility of it—he was already their slave, as helpless as an insect that couldn’t even bite—exhilarated all three of them. As Wade screamed with laughter his tormentorss laughed too, with similar abandon, not caring how they sounded, not caring about anything except what their hands were doing, and how much more they could do.

Later—much later—Wade begged for death. “Kill me, if you’re going to kill me! Just don’t—torture me like this!”

That was when Sloan grabbed his cock and, after a few short strokes, shot a load that soaked Wade’s belly and the chestnut hair on his chest. Robert followed suit, the force of his cum explosion nearly knocking him off his feet. Then the two of them dove headfirst toward Wade’s towering erection. It took only a few seconds for their mouths to coax forth a geyser of cum that coated their faces.

When he had caught his breath Robert said, “Okay, now we have to clean you up.”

Wade didn’t have to be told what that meant: his torture would continue. Not that the cleaning part wasn’t true. Semen had to be scrubbed from nearly every part of his body, and they did a thorough job, using prickly washcloths that drove him mad, especially when they reached his feet. When they had got him washed and dried and totally delirious, they began to shave him. Wade didn’t mind his body hair, rather liked his furry legs and chest; but all three of them were curious to see how much more ticklish he would be with all the hair gone. Robert and Sloan were expert at shaving male bodies, using the traditional metal blades. First they had to lather him up, and without even discussing it they shifted into a roleplay wherein the shaving was taking place in a clinical setting, and Wade’s “attendants” didn’t know that he was ticklish. As they lathered up his thighs he squirmed and said, in a voice raw from laughing, “Please be careful, I’m very ticklish!”

“Don’t be silly,” Sloan said. “There’s no such thing as ticklishness.” As if to prove it he began stroking Wade’s balls.

Wade erupted into a peal of giggles. “Oh, don’t tickle my balls!”

“The patient’s hallucinating,” Robert said. “He thinks his thighs and his genitals are ticklish.”

“I wonder where else he thinks he’s ticklish?” Sloan asked.

“We’ll have to find out.”

Their lathered fingers attacked Wade’s belly next, and in between his howls of laughter he grabbed enough breath to beg them to stop. “Please! You can see how ticklish I am!”

“It’s all in your mind,” Robert said. “Just an illusion. We’ll have to keep tickling you till you see it our way.”

They had the time of their lives tickling a slick, lathered Wade into a state of delirium. But when it came to the actual shaving they proceeded carefully, not wanting to harm a millimeter of his sublimely sensitive skin. Wade sighed as their razors scraped and, yes, tickled him, but not enough to make him squirm. When at last they washed him off and he stood in front of the mirror, he was amazed at the transformation. As with the shaved guys in porno vids, his cock and balls looked even more enormous with no pubic hair framing them. And his well-defined chest now had a vulnerable look that seemed to suit him.

“Now the oil,” Robert said.

They oiled him up and started a free-for-all on the bed, so that soon all three of them were slithering around each other. Even though Wade could slide from their grasp like a fish they still got plenty of tickling in, and after a while he was too weak to struggle. Greedy fingers sped over him, no hair to resist their explorations. To Wade it felt like a thousand fingers, and he had no choice but to surrender to them. They didn’t stop until he passed out.

Much later, Robert lay with his arms around Wade’s chest, working his ribs, while Sloan lay at the foot of the bed, stroking Wade’s soles. Wade was panting, the urgency of his breath rising and falling with the intensity of the tickling. His tormentors were in complete control of his body, and all he could do was ride the ticklish agony as helplessly as a fallen leaf on the surface of a stream. It might never end…it might never end!

“I can’t believe how ticklish you are,” Robert said, shifting his grip. The lower ribs—oh, that was where Wade lived! Or, in this case, nearly died. His panting grew deeper and his eyes squeezed shut, tears rolling down his face as Robert sent shock waves through his torso.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the bed, Sloan let his fingers play wildly over soles and toes that were too weak to do more than twitch. “This is how it’s supposed to be. How I always thought it would be…I think he’s trying to say something.”

Robert brought his mouth close to Wade’s ear. “What are you’re saying, my pet? You’re not begging us to stop, are you? Because you might as well save whatever breath you’ve got left.”

Wade’s eyelids were fluttering, he seemed on the verge of passing out. “Tell me the truth,” he whispered hoarsely. “Is this a timeroom?”

Robert looked at Sloan. “Should we tell him?”

“I think he knows,” Sloan said.

Wade let out a convulsive sigh, stretching and twisting with a last show of effort. Then he sank back, surrendering to their fingers.

“That’s right, baby,” Robert said. “You’re in a timeroom. We can keep tickling you forever, and by the time we finally leave this room, not a second will have passed in the real world.”

 

© 2009 Wayne Courtois

Wayne Courtois is author of the memoir A Report from Winter (see www.reportfromwintiner.com) and the BDSM novel My Name Is Rand. His fiction has previously appeared in Velvet Mafia, as well as anthologies including Best Gay Erotica, Hot Gay Erotica, Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Country Boys, and the forthcoming College Boys. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri with his longtime partner. Visit him online at WayneCourtois.com