I spotted him immediately.  A lot of people come into the store
barefoot during the summer--little kids wanting ice cream, teenage
girls in bathing suits, adults who can't be bothered.  But to this guy
it meant something.  The little slap when his toes hit the floor.  The
way he felt up the tile with his sole.  And of course, the walk,
hunched over at the crotch.
 
I glanced at Lisa.  She saw too.  It was time to start.
 
"Excuse me, sir."
 
"Huh?...what?"
 
"You can't come in here in bare feet.  State health regulations."
 
"Come on! I, uh, just came in for a soda."
 
"Look, as the manager, I have to ask you to go out to your car and
put your shoes on."
 
"I didn't drive in; I just walked over from my house, across the
street."
 
Those feet were dirtier than from a walk across the street.  "I'm
sorry, sir, but you'll have to leave, or go get shoes.  If you just
want a soda, you can use the Coke machine at the back corner of the
building."
 
"Geez, look, lady, I just want to buy something quick."

"I'm sorry."

He looked disconcerted, but more embarassed than mad.  He was turning
red.  But he went out and picked his way across the gravel to the Coke
machine.  Savoring the stones, daring himself to withstand each new
step.
 
"Hurry!" said Lisa.  Kurt came over from the dairy section, and we
ran out to the back door, grabbing the things on the way.  We got to
the Coke machine and hid in the shadows.  He was so concentrated, he
didn't see us.  We waited till he reached into his pocket for the
change, then leaped out with the net.  No one was around to hear him
yell as we got him into the shed.
 
Soon we had him strapped down on the table, on his back, arms and
torso pinned, ankles tied apart.  At first he had cursed us--"you
fucking idiots"--but now he lay silent and terrified.
 
"You have to understand," I said to him slowly.  "We're not going to
hurt you.  My name is The Liberator.  We take people like you who know
about vulnerability.  We show you, more than you've known before, how
vulnerable you are.  Because that's the only way to learn how
vulnerable you're not."
 
"Cut the crap, lady, and let me out of here.  What do you want?  You
can take my wallet--it's there in front..."
 
"What's your name?"
 
"My..I'm not telling you my name, Christ!  You're gonna come to my
house?"

There was only one thing more to check.  I reached down and tickled
the side of his neck.  He squirmed but didn't smile.  That proved
it--a tickling fetishist.  If he'd been a foot fetishist, he wouldn't
have hangups about tickling and have been afraid to laugh.

"What's your name?"
 
Silence.  I picked up the bottle and squirted a lot of the liquid on
his right foot.
 
"God, what is that?" he cried.  Probably thought it was lighter
fluid.  I showed him: Formula 409.  Then I took a some rough paper
towel and started wiping off the ball of his foot.
 
"This is a service we provide to our barefoot customers.  Once the
feet are antiseptic and squeaky clean, then the customer can go back
to the main floor and take full advantage of our many lines of
healthful and delicious products."
 
"Jesus.  I must, I must be dreaming," he said.
 
Yes, you're dreaming.  But in dreams you're allowed to have violent
fantasies like this.
 
I kept cleaning the ball of the foot, squirting on 409 and rubbing
roughly.  That's such sensitive skin.  He had to start twitching the
foot and smiling slightly, in spite of his terror.

"Now you see what we're about," I said.  "To wake you up."  I
scrubbed a little faster, and he wiggled.

Lisa cleaned the other foot.  I moved down to the sole.  He had small
feet, with a wide and rather high arch.  The skin was a little flabby
underneath, with an line of soft, raised flesh down the center of the
sole.

"What's your name?" I asked.  Both his feet were twitching, and his
lips were fixed in a permanent smile.

"What do you think?" said Kurt.  "Will we have him screaming any
second now?"

"No," said Lisa, "this one's not so ticklish.  He's been wanting it
too long, and when you want to be tickled it doesn't work."

"But he's tied up..." Kurt leered.

"Doesn't matter," said Lisa.  "He'll never really laugh and scream.
He'll wear down by attrition.  Like, how long can he stand this?"  She
rubbed up and down the soft line of skin on the left sole.  A little
faster, a little faster,
 
"You people are tickling me," he said.
 
"And it's going to go on forever."  I squirted more and went between
the toes, holding them.  Underneath, scraping the skin that nothing
ever touches, doing the second and third toes over and over, diddling
the side of the big toe.  He laughed and said "ooo..." time and time
again.  Not hysterically, but he couldn't stop.
 
It took five minutes before he believed the scene was what we said it
was.  It took two more before he got tired.  Finally: "Hey, wait,
stop, listen..." We didn't stop.  "Hey--ey--ey--I can't breathe.  If I
tell you my name, will you...ack!...will you stop?"
 
"We'll stop this part."

"Okay, I'm _____ ______."

We stopped.  "Did you want to tell us that?" I asked.

"Uh..."

"Tell the truth."

"No."

"Good," I said.

"On to the second part?" said Lisa?

"Yeah," I said.  "You're probably sick of tickling by now, right?"
 
"Lady..."
 
"So we're just going to give you some sensations, plain old
sensations, like walking around that gravel tonight.  And, you're
going to tell us whether you're a tickling fetishist."

"Shit! What is this personal stuff?  You're trying to psychoanalyze
my sex life?"

Lisa and I picked up the foot-long wooden bars.  Through the ends,
like a T, we'd fixed the bits from 1/8 inch screwdrivers, the kind
that go straight across on the tip.  1/8 inch was just right.  Less
than that, and it drew blood after a minute, and really hurt; more,
and you felt nothing except pain from the corners.

"I oughtta report you to the shrink police."
 
I hit him two or three times on the sole and watched him twitch.

"Did that hurt?"
 
"Uh...no," he said thoughtfully.  He was starting to wonder what was
going on.
 
Five more hits.  "Did it tickle?"
 
"Uh...I don't know," he said after a gasp like a laugh.
 
I hit more rapidly, though not steadily, never causing pain, but
making him pant.  Lisa started in, and he almost went crazy.  Two
unrelated tortures at random intervals--too much.
 
"Look, c'mon, ho ho, stop it, ho ho, ho ho.  You're driving me nuts."

"Does being nuts turn you on?"

"Shut up!"

Poke, poke, poke.  For a full minute he rolled around and hiccuped.
Then we sped up, and his laughter changed--became shallow and rapid.

"I like it, I like it, okay, but enough, enough..."

"You like what?"

"I like this tickling."

"Does it turn you on?"

"Yes, oh ho, oh ho, yes, I'm hot, I'm so hot..."

"A fetish?"

"Yes, yes, all my life, since I was four, but...I'll tell you, but
stop, I can't talk."

We stopped.  I let him recover for a full minute.  Then I asked, "Are
you a tickling fetishist?"

He was angry again. "Dammit, why are you doing this?"

"You just admitted it."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"You were tickling me."

"So?"

"So I couldn't take it!"

"But you're not all that ticklish."

"Yeah, but you drove me crazy.  Tweaking me over and over, messing
with my mind.  I couldn't stand it!"
 
"You have a weakness that you can't control, then?"
 
"Not like that!"
 
"You'll give in to anything, because your feet are too ticklish."

"Yeah....Anything."

We paused and let him meditate.

After a minute he said, "You gonna let me go?"

"What next?" said Lisa.  "Make his agree to put an `I am ticklish on
my feet' poster in his front yard?"

"No, it's getting late," I said.  "Time for him to learn the ultimate
lesson.  Tell me," I asked him, "what is the ultimate lesson?"
 
"Fuck you!"

"Sort of.  Here, let me give you a hint."  I undid his belt, pulled
down his shorts, and pulled down his underwear.

"No, no, wait, please..."  For the first time he was really begging.

"Don't worry, it won't hurt or do damage.  In fact, it will be sweet.
After all that pricking, I bet those feet could do with some soothing.
Eh?  TLC?"

Lisa handed me the bottle of Wesson oil.  She had already covered her
hands and his foot with it, way too much of it.  It dripped down his
toes and all over the table.  I did the same.

"How about a nice foot massage?"

He looked at us like we were walking tuna singing the Marseillaise.
We started rubbing his feet.  Deeply, massaging, truly nice.  And
then, "Oops," I said.  My hand had slipped across the balls of his
feet again, very fast, making him jump.

"Hey!" he said.

"Oops," said Lisa as she slipped bumpity-bump across the toes.

Then we really began.  We pressed hard and flashed rapidly all over
the feet.  Too much lubrication, too random, too much stimulation.  I
ran my fingers the short way across the arch, back and forth very
fast, tweaking the tight muscle down the middle of his slightly fallen
arch.  He couldn't stop rolling: "Stop it, stop it."
 
Lisa found the little bones of the ball of the foot, pressing hard
enough to make her fingers bump over them.  That really made him
twist.  "No, aah aah, I can't, stop there, ho ho ho, ..."
 
Finally Kurt started on all the other places--ribs, stomach, and
inner thigh muscles.  The guy couldn't speak.  As Lisa'd predicted, he
didn't explode into laugther, but imploded.  He got quieter, and more
and more rigid.  He was giving up, losing control, a jellyfish, not
able to fight.

I started digging into the oily arch with the tips of my fingers, and
he went over the edge.  He froze, and then he came.  We'd left his
penis free; the semen spurted forward, then ran in a stream down his
rock-hard cock.

We stopped tickling and waited for him to come back to consciousness.
He opened his eyes and stared at me like a puppydog who hated my guts.
 
"And now for the crux, the key to this whole lesson," I said.  I
reached back, took the knife by the handle, and whipped it out in
front of him.  "We'll see if you UNDERSTAND!" I shouted.

"Hey, wait, lady, no, it's okay, it's okay..."

I held the knife to his neck.  "There are two questions.  First: What
harm has just been done to you?"
 
"Huh?" he whispered.

"What harm?"

He thought for a bit, then said, "This is all against my will.
It's horrible!"
 
"Yes, but this is a fantasy, we're working that stuff out, that's the
point of this exercise.  I mean, What harm is it that you just came?"
 
"Uh..."
 
"Think!"

"Uh..."
 
I moved the knife away an inch.  "Very good.  But the second question
is harder.  Why are you ashamed?"
 
Pause.
 
"You're deathly ashamed.  You can barely look at us to hate us for
this."
 
Silence.
 
"WHY?!"  The knife touched his throat.
 
"It's sick," he whispered.
 
"No, _I'm_ sick," I said.  "Are you sick?  Are you a sicko ticklefoot?"

Silence.

"ANSWER ME!  Are you a sicko tickley gigglebox?"
 
Suddenly he got it.  His eyes focussed on me, and his face became
human.  "Fuck you, bitch," he said.
 
The knife trembled, then paused.  I removed it, and stood up.  "Very
good."

Lisa ran back to the store as Kurt and I untied him.  He pulled up
his pants, and we gave him a towel to clean off with.  He was sitting
on the table, still shaky, when Lisa came back.

"Here's the standard package of things we give people in your
situation," she said.  "First, $400 from the register, for your
trouble.  Buy yourself some new tires, vacation, a month of therapy
sessions, whatever you like."
 
"Second," I said, "here's my address.  I give this to you as a
gesture of trust.  You could call the cops and have me put in jail for
20 years for what I just did to you."
 
"And third," said Lisa, "a pair of flip-flops in the newest style,
compliments of our boutique."
 
"Thanks," he said, "but I have a better pair at home.  ...No, okay,
I'll take these.  I sure as hell can't walk across gravel after this!"
 
"Well," I said, "was it as good for you as it was for us?"

"Buncha assholes," he yelled.  He sidled over to the door, as if we
were going to run after him.  He opened it and got outside quickly.
 
"Boy, I'm tired," I said.  "Time to wash these hands and see how soon
we can close up the store."
 
"Look," said Lisa, "I stepped in some dogshit while I was running
over here.  Guess I'll have to take my shoe off.  I can probably make
it across the gravel..."