Author’s Note: A short story written quickly in response to a request, and featuring “tickle boots.” Tickle boots are a neat idea, and I’d like to see them used more often. In particular, I’d like to use them more often in my own stories, but the muse doesn’t always cooperate.
“Maxine, dear, please take off those clodhoppers,” her evil stepmother told her.
Before she had turned eighteen, Maxine Laston hadn’t though of Aunt Zoe and Uncle Alvin as her evil stepmother and wicked uncle. Her real parents - Uncle Alvin’s brother and his wife - had died when she was six. Killed in a wrong-address drug raid. Uncle Alvin and Aunt Zoe had raised Maxine along with their own daughter Jennifer, and had managed the trust fund Maxine’s parents had left her. A trust fund enriched by the settlement coughed up by the embarrassed authorities. A trust fund that would remain out of Maxine’s reach until she turned twenty-five. Which was the source of the friction.
“Why?” Maxine asked. “Jennifer wears a pair just like these.”
“Jennifer is an engineering major. You’re a liberal arts person with a concentration in uxorial studies.”
“So? My grades are all right.” Then Maxine had to admit, “The past two semesters, anyway.”
What made Zoe and Alvin into Maxine’s evil stepmother and wicked uncle was not just that they controlled the purse-strings. Not just that they made Maxine dance to their tune. It was that they were so often, infuriatingly right. They were right that unlike her cousin Jennifer, Maxine wasn’t cut out to be a techie type - her first semester’s grades had been a disaster. They were right that having a car on campus was more trouble than it was worth - and so her car was now in long-term storage. They were right about Bradd being hunky on the outside but creepy on the inside - so Bradd was now her ex-boyfriend. Maxine couldn’t stand the thought that they were right about this, too.
“It’s not just about grades,” Aunt Zoe explained. “Your major is about deportment, as well. You should wear a classic skirt and pumps. Or harem pants with slipper-mocs, if you want a modern look. Or even jeans and sandals if you insist on being avant-retro: Go for being retro-granola, rather than retro-goth.”
“Your aunt’s right,” Uncle Alvin spoke up from his laptop. “You couldn’t wrap your mind around gravic tensors, but you can wrap it around fashion and aesthetics. You should try to do so, rather than embracing deliberate ugliness. In particular, you should take those boots off right now, or you’ll regret it.”
In response, Maxine unzipped a pocket and pulled out a pair of small padlocks. One she fastened on her right boot and the other on her left. “Ha!” she said, holding up the keys. “My boots are locked on now, and they’re staying locked on!”
In response, Uncle Alvin fished out his ‘phone and punched in a combination. “Your mistake,” he said.
Maxine felt the soles of her feet beginning to tingle, in her boots.
“We have a project at work, applying micro-gravics to nerve stimulation, for prisoner control,” Uncle Alvin explained. “However, Beautiful Betty’s has also expressed an interest.” He referred to the second-largest of the twenty-first century’s romance-and-sex chains, surpassed only by the original Victoria’s.
The tingling turned into a sudden intense tickle. “Heehee hahahaha!” Maxine laughed as she sunk to the floor. She lost her grip on the keys as a tickle-wave ran up and down, flitting rapidly between heels and toes. Aunt Zoe stooped to retrieve them, and set them up on a side table. Out of Maxine’s reach.
“We ran off a hundred shoe-insole prototypes for testing,” Uncle Alvin continued, “And I slipped a pair into your clodhoppers this morning.”
“Hee hahahaha! Damn! Hee hahaha! Damn you to fuck! Heeheehee hahahahahaha!” Maxine struggled to her knees and fell back down on the carpet. Inside her boots, it felt like a hundred feathers were dancing the flamenco on her soles. She clawed at her boots, but then the tickles pulsed and Maxine grabbed at the carpet, laughing hysterically. She kicked. No good. The teasing sensations clung to the soles of her feet, as if they had been painted with some sort of sticky tickle-sauce. She could not escape. She could not escape the tickling.
At last the tickling ended, but Maxine though she could sense a faint tingling from Uncle Alvin’s diabolical device. It was waiting to start up again.
“If you try to move, it will trigger another burst,” Uncle Alvin told Maxine as she lay face down on the carpet, panting. Maxine considered this, and then tried to rise up, moving slowly and carefully in an effort to avoid triggering whatever sensors the device had.
Not carefully enough. More tickle-pulses flared into Maxine’s soles, making her squeal and collapse with laughter, pounding the carpet. The tickle pulsed through the entirety of both her feet at once, and then changed to a pattern of focusing on various different spots, randomly. Unavoidable tickling, coming from inside her boots, the boots that Maxine herself had locked on her feet. Nor did her socks offer any protection. The tickles came from immaterial gravic waves that reached through her socks to directly stimulate the thousands of nerve endings. And it felt to Maxine as if each and every one of those nerve endings were being singled out for special attention.
The tickle burst ended. “Let me know when you want me to pull those clodhoppers off for you,” Aunt Zoe said.
Maxine, lying face-down on the carpet once again, looked up. “Damn you to fuck,” she whispered. “I’ll get them off myself.”
“If you insist.” Aunt Zoe shrugged and sat down in a nearby armchair.
“You’re sure you don’t want any help?” Uncle Alvin asked.
Maxine glared. “You can give me my keys back. You took them, after all.”
Uncle Alvin swept up the keys from the end table and dropped them near Maxine’s right hand. She got a hold on them, reached down - and triggered another burst. “Hahahaha heeheheheeeheeheeheee!” she laughed, squirming, as two teasing lines ran in swift spirals over her soles. Inside her boots, where she couldn’t reach them.
On and on, the tickling spirals ran, invisible, imperceptible to every one except Maxine. She was all too aware of them as they tickled her toes, and her insteps, and her heels, and every place in between in their spiral dance. On and on, tickling past the time when Maxine expected them to stop. Tickling past the time when Maxine was sure that they would stop. Tickling past the time when Maxine was desperate for them to stop. But stop they finally did. Temporarily.
Maxine was lying on her back, now, after her latest struggle with the diabolical tickling devices. She caught her breath. Considered various options. Sat up suddenly, surging forward in a desperate attempt to unlock her boots before the next tickling burst overwhelmed her. She failed. This time the tickles pulse-pulse-pulsed with a rapid beat. Straight into her feet. Making her howl with laughter as she thrashed around on the carpet once more. Until the tickle-burst finally relented. Was it her imagination, or was this burst longer than the last one? Was each burst getting longer and longer? Maxine didn’t ask. She didn’t want to beg - and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.
Rest. Try again. Trigger another tickle-burst. Tickles slashing across her soles, this time. Tickling she couldn’t escape. Tickling she couldn’t resist. Tickling that was making her a bit crazier, a bit more desperate with each new and unique burst.
Finally, after two hours and nearly two dozen tickle-bursts, Maxine surrendered. She asked Aunt Zoe to help her remove her clodhoppers, and Uncle Alvin finally turned off his infernal device. “Are you always right, Uncle Alvin?” Maxine moaned.
“Not always,” he answered. “Sometimes your Aunt Zoe is right.”
Aunt Zoe smiled at that. “Now go up to your room, and dress yourself decently,” she said. Maxine nodded meekly and walked, sock-footed, toward the stairs.
(end)