Feathers and Ink

Blocking is essential for resisting interrogation, and in this day and age it is a skill everyone in the Core Nebula is expected to master. The technique itself is deceptively simple. One need only conjure a single, unwavering mental image and hold fast to it. The simpler the image, the stronger the barrier.

My training had been thorough. My mental block was nothing more than a color: a deep ocean blue, the color of the vast seas that covered most of my homeworld. A sapphire expanse stretching to every horizon, its glasslike surface scattering the sun into countless points of light. It was an easy image to conjure, and thus effective. Who, having stood upon the ocean shoreline, could ever forget the sea and its majesty?

I prayed that the strength of this visual imagery would help me now as I sat all alone in my cell, my cuffed hands in my lap.

The Lieutenant was the one who summoned me into the viewing deck, as vast a room as I had ever seen on a ship. Its immense window opened up into the blackness of space, not a single drop of color visible. We were evidently miles away from any inhabited planet or asteroid.

I stood before a tall, darkly-shrouded figure flanked by two guards in white. His presence was undeniable, and I sensed with a start that he had Access. Immediately I threw up my mind's blue shades, lest he tried to make a connection. It dawned on me then that the reason I was captured was because somehow, they discovered I too had access to the Link, which made me an easier target for interrogation.

The Lieutenant stood behind me, his tasing gun nestled teasingly and threatening between my shoulder-blades.

"It's simple," said the General before me. "Tell me where he is."

I said nothing. I knew they would not resort to physical pain to extract the information. The Link is delicate, and mental images are easily corrupted upon discomfort, pain, or even anxiety. Memories are best transferred whole and unblemished if both subjects are in a calm, receptive state. In my rational mind I knew that I should have been anxious within this moment, but I felt an unnatural sense of calm in spite of my situation. A sedative, no doubt, given to me as soon as I was taken unconscious onto the ship. They had been prepared.

I tugged the blue curtains around my mind tight and pursed my lips.

The General strode forward gracefully. My knees trembled as I felt overcome with an urge to run, but I felt the Lieutenant press the muzzle of the gun further into my back.

"You'll find that cooperation is in your best interest."

I shook my head. I was confident they would not risk causing me distress and corrupting such valuable information. But I was entirely unprepared for his next move.

He placed a gloved hand on my head, resting it there simply. Covered as his face was under his mask, I could not see his expression, which helped my cause a bit; I steeled my mind, took a breath, and thought of the ocean.

It was a difficult mental endeavor. My body felt weak from the combination of sedative and lack of sleep. The cell they had put me in had contained nothing but a long, concrete bench, a small square pillow, and a gray coarse blanket. His gloved hand moving through my hair was the softest thing I had ever remembered feeling upon waking amidst the cold austerity of his ship. It took all my effort not to relax into his touch.

His fingers began to move through my hair - combing through it gently, massaging my scalp in a way that felt - heavenly blue.

Heavenly blue?

The blue inside my mind had lightened. His touch lightened too, sending tingles down the back of my neck and down my spine as I shivered against the firm muzzle of the gun between my shoulder blades. It was too gentle, it was too beautiful.

So this was his game, lulling me into helpless, receptive bliss, with nothing but his hands.

His fingers began skittering, and my breath hitched. The gentle, patient touch was morphing into a tickle and was beginning to take its toll. I squeezed my eyes shut, twisted my head to and fro, and tried to swallow the mirthful giggles bubbling up inside of me, threatening to burst forth.

I could feel him approaching with his Link, could sense the smug satisfaction radiating off of his face as my deep blue slowly turned to cerulean, and then sky blue. He was going to tickle me transparent.

I panicked. I could not let him. So I did the only thing I could think to do in that instant amidst my slipping sanity. I turned my head to meet his hand, and I bit him. My mouth tasted of warm leather; my teeth found purchase against soft yet firm flesh.

I heard him let out a cry and stumble backwards.

Instantly everything behind my eyes faded to deep blue once again. I sighed in relief, but choked out a painful cry of my own as I felt a hand come down hard and fast across my face. In response to my bite, the Lieutenant had slapped me. I fell back onto the ground, tensed and recoiled, but another slap did not follow.

"Enough," the General said, having regained his composure.

The Lieutenant stood by, awaiting his orders. "Were you close, sir?"

"Close enough that she panicked, and gave me a very generous parting gift upon her withdrawal." He removed his hand from the glove and observed it, wiggling his fingers. I saw to my relief that I had not drawn blood.

The Lieutenant yanked me to my feet, his heavy hands on my shoulders anchoring me in place.

The General stepped up to me and gently caressed the limp leather glove against my stinging cheek. Shivering, I looked away.

"But I know now, I think, how to win her. Take her to her holding chamber; she is too distraught now to yield us any useful information. Return her to a routine of Rest. The extraction must wait."

"For how long, sir?"

"For as long as it takes to get under her skin."

The next couple of days were uneventful. The white-shrouded guards carried on their duties around me as if nothing had happened. They brought me food at appropriate intervals, and water. For the most part they respected my privacy and did not interact with me beyond what was necessary. I was given a clean suit to change into: a pale gray bodysuit, skin-tight and warm. I was glad of the warmth, for the air in the ship was generally cold, as was my chamber, and they had not given me any shoes.

I was allowed to roam the observation deck, and occasionally ventured out onto it to sit cross-legged in front of the vast window, staring into space and trying to recall visions of my home planet. Sometimes I was bold and traipsed around the edges of the deck, occasionally catching a glimpse of the hallways beyond the wide doors at which two guards were always stationed.

But mostly I stayed in my chamber under the blanket, trying hard to regain my energy and prepare myself for the next attempt at extraction. It felt like a losing battle however; it seemed like my energy was kept perpetually at seventy percent, and I had no doubt that the food or drink was laced with sedative.

I tried hard to dream of the ocean, of singing whales, sea-salt, white sand, and the occasional coconut tree. But day by day, amidst the bleak monochromatic expanse of ship, these familiar images were fading.

One day two guards entered my chamber to fetch me. With a hand on each of my shoulders, they steered me out onto the observation deck, in the center of which was set up what appeared to be a wide white archway, about human-height and width, with restraints hanging from the top of the arch and also fettered to the ground. They placed me in the center of the archway and told me to raise my arms. I complied, too broken in spirit to do otherwise.

They guided my wrists to the cuffs, which snapped metallically in place. One guard used his foot to nudge my legs apart, and my ankles were likewise enveloped by similar cuffs on the floor. Then they left me, stretched and vulnerable, facing the window and the great expanse of blackness.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

I heard the General's voice behind me.

"A dark expanse dotted with light. The ocean and the night sky are not so different, wouldn't you say? Both are vast stretches of darkness scattered with light: foam upon the sea, stars across the heavens.

"I have not looked upon the ocean in a very long time. But I remember that special moment when sea and sky seem to bleed into one another. Have you ever stood on the shoreline from midnight until sunrise? At first, the sea and the sky are indistinguishable. Then, little by little, the sky begins to lighten, and everything is revealed."

It was a clever analogy. But I stood prepared to face him with my curtain of ocean blue.

He had circled in front of me. He reached out his hand, and I shrunk away, remembering the Lieutenant's slap across my face a couple of days prior. But he only cradled my chin and held it there. I noticed he made no attempt to open the Link.

His gloved fingers began to play up the left side of my face, and then he cupped my cheek in his palm. "I know," he said, "you require a delicate touch."

I gasped as he took my left ear between his fingers, rolling it to and fro, tugging gently, teasing and tickling.

I clenched my jaw and my mind, determined not to give into the electric sensation. My lip trembled, and he pressed his advantage, engulfing the other side of my face with his other hand, and now softly running the tips of his fingers over both ears, as well as through my scalp, and under my chin...

I squirmed futilely, but found no give in my bonds. HIs constant teasing and my inability to resist were blooming into a conflagration between my legs. I attempted unsuccessfully to clench my thighs, terrified he would notice my building excitement.

Still he did not attempt to open the Link between us.

He found a rather ticklish spot at the nape of my neck, and I barely suppressed a whimpering giggle. My resolve slipped for a moment, but still I desperately clung to that deep blue.

"Please," I whispered, "Don't do this."

"No? Then perhaps tell me what I want to know."

I shook my head, still trembling and shivering throughout.

His fingers continued to roam for a while - and then, without a word, he withdrew his hands and took his leave. Trembling and confused, I I listened to his footsteps fade behind me, and heard the swish of the double-door open and close. I hung my head as the two white guards approached me to remove me from the apparatus and escort me back to my chamber, one on either side of me.

There were several more of these teasing tickling sessions - all conducted in silence, as he sought and found all of my secret ticklish places, from the backs of my knees to the curve of my belly to the spaces between my ribs. Though the bodysuit covered most of my skin, I found it amplified every tickly sensation. I fought desperately to maintain my composure, but each time he was quicker to dissolve me into giggles, and still I clenched tightly to my ocean blue.

When he had loosened my giggles, which by the fifth session had morphed more into belly laughs as he teased and tickled, he would leave me abruptly, euphoric and moist, without ever having touched the Link. Each time I was escorted back to my cell flushed and tingling between my legs, my mind and body exhausted from the failed effort of keeping my composure.

After the final meal of the day and lights-out, I would finish myself off underneath the coarse gray blanket. There was no camera in my cell, mercifully, but part of me sensed that the General was well aware of my clandestine activities after each session.

I had surmised his plan, so I thought. His aim was to wear me down - to make me desperate and comfortable, to ache for his teasing, ticklish touch, and then form the Link when I least suspected it, when my deep blue turned cerulean, periwinkle, and finally sky-blue and translucent. Each of these sessions was more than a test - it was an opportunity for me to confess... or perhaps, beg to confess. He did not need the Link to understand that these tickling sessions excited me terribly; anyone could see that, from the way I whimpered and cried for mercy and tried in vain to clench my thighs together, yes - but most of all from the way I sobbed and trembled after each unfulfilling, yet painfully arousing session.

The ship's many guards caught on quickly. When they came to my chamber to restrain me, they would wiggle their fingers at me suggestively. The way they handled me, too, began to tickle more. There were always two guards to escort me, carrying me forward with a gently clawed hand under each of my armpits, the pressure of which made me wriggle in their grasp like a fish on a hook. I knew better than to resist, however. One time I tried; I slid my bare heels against the black, mirrorlike floor of the hallway and tried to pull them backwards, but they tickled me to the ground - one pinned my arms behind me as the other scurried his fingers up and down my torso. When I was limp with laughter and breathless, they had carried me to the apparatus, secured me tighter than usual, and gave my thighs several extra squeezes each for good measure, before the General entered and for his part took me apart piece by ticklish piece.

Still, no interrogation, no questions: just squirming and laughing helplessly beneath his tickling touch, only to be released damp, dizzy, and yearning.

The closest call was on the fifth day, after he had gotten me good and squirmy by squeezing my hips rapidly until I mewed and begged for mercy. He leaned in.

"Wouldn't it feel good," he whispered, "to give in? I'd give you such a thorough tickling as a reward, and then I'd let you go. Or perhaps by that point you'd beg me not to let you go."

I shook my head, awash in helpless bliss, sinking my nails into my deep ocean blue, my saline savior, and braced myself for an Access attack that never came. He stopped abruptly, and I moaned. How I wished he'd keep going. How I yearned to throw myself at his feet and be his good girl and spill all of my secrets, not all of them having to do with the inter-planetary conflict that threatened our galaxy.

But I couldn't.

On the sixth day, I sensed the sessions were coming to a head. The General had brought the Lieutenant and two guards to watch this session as he tickled me to the edge of bliss. There was now an audience to my torment, and nowhere to hide my blushing face.

I whined and wiggled, sobbed and strained and laughed and pleaded. From the corner of my eye I saw the guards shift, clenching and unclenching their weapons subtly, clearly aroused at my predicament. The Lieutenant just smirked.

Light was leaking through my blue curtains, which today felt heavier than they had ever felt, and I had not the strength to keep them closed any more. The deep blue parted; waves became mist, and mist became clouds.

I felt him make the Link, and suddenly we were both blinded by an explosion of white light and deafened by a loud yelp.

I opened one eye. He had recoiled, and was curled in over himself, his hands gripping his head.

"Sir! Sir! What happened, sir? Did she bite you?"

It took me a moment or two to realize what had just occurred, and then it dawned on me. The Link had been made, and he had for a brief moment reached into my mind.

But there was one thing he had forgotten about the Link, which most people tend to forget, which is that it is a two-way channel. Memories can be shared through it, making it an effective avenue for communication, or interrogation. But memories were not the only things that could traverse the Link - feelings could, too. And right now my feelings were at the forefront, utterly eclipsing the crucial information he sought.

A nanosecond was all it took. The slightest brush of my mind against his, and he was blinded by brilliant white. In a single instant he experienced the overwhelming consequence of his teasing fingertips against my skin: the flood of my conflicting emotions, the intoxicating frustration, the helpless, irrepressible joy I had been powerless to hide - and above all, pleasure, white and hot and starlike.

"Sir? Is it... are you all right?" asked the Lieutenant.

The General, still doubled over, said nothing for a moment, his breathing ragged. Slowly he rose to his feet. "Leave us," he said to the Lieutenant, who gave him a concerned look but nodded and motioned the other two guards out of the room.

I myself was still reeling, caught up in my breathing and blinking rapidly from the blinding light, and totally unprepared for him to make the connection again. Before I could protest, he placed two hands on my head once again, fingers gently curved and tickling into my scalp. Another rush of ecstasy, and all went white again. Amidst my residual euphoria, he saw Everything. I could feel him fighting hard against the diamond-like brilliance of his own creation - the ticklish torture, the inescapable, pleasing touches, the teasing condescension that made me damp down below. He peeled back each of the layers of my memories, my fears, my longings, my shame. My secrets, all there, bare and transparent, even the one I swore I would never give away, though I wasn't sure which secret that was anymore.

I couldn't get him out - it was done. He had what he needed. And much more.

He removed his hands from my head and we both gasped and shook. His breathing was trembly; I knew it well as the breathing of a man aroused.

"I will," he gasped, "be back to finish this," and stumbled out of view as the doors parted for him.

A while later, two guards came to retrieve me. I offered no resistance, going limp in their arms as they carried me away.

That night I lay shivering under my coarse gray blanket, my eyes squeezed shut, trying to piece my memories back together and assess the damage.

He had been inside my mind, all right. I could see the fingerprints he had left behind on my memories: even, and especially, to my indignation, those that had nothing to do with the secret that had brought me aboard this ship in the first place. They bore the unmistakable fragrance of his own mind, as though he had handled them one by one before setting them back where he found them.

I settled into a restless sleep.

Throughout the better part of the night, I dreamed he had me in his clutches once again. I flushed with fascinated embarrassment as I watched myself wander through scene after scene of several more salacious scenarios...

I was squirming and laughing facedown over the General's lap, with a guard holding down my kicking legs, as the General pinned my wrists to my back with one of his hands and tickled me with the other.

I was being chased barefoot down the echoey hallways by the guards, only to run straight into him and be tickle-wrestled to the cold, glassy floor. My legs were forcefully parted and a smooth, buzzing object was held firmly against my clit, tickling me to my peak as I convulsed with helpless laughter in his arms.

I was in bed with him, naked, with one of his gloved hands around my throat as he fucked me with his tentacled cock, tickling me from the inside out, deaf to my pleas for mercy.

I awoke in a sweat.

The unique thing about dreams, no matter your universe of origin, is that you can never be sure whence they originate. Memories belong to you, and you can always tell whether it's your memory or not. But dreams can arrive through Elsewhere, carried invisibly and anonymously, even through a Link.

Were these visions of my own creation, or did he deposit them there, in that brief, diamond-white flash of the union of our minds?

I heard the door to my chamber slide open. Looming at the door stood not the guards this time, but the General himself, beckoning me forth with one twitch of his finger.

Belly tickles

Giggling helplessly

Counting ribs

Ticklish tummy

Deliciously ticklish

Wiggling fingers

Begging for mercy

Ticklish chuckles

Skittering fingertips

Squirming free

Tickle torture

Toes held back

Bare bellies

It tickles

Sensitive soles

Not there!

Thigh squeezes

Tickly stubble

Helplessly ticklish

Trying not to laugh

Neck kisses

Let's count your ribs

Ear nibbles

Pinned and tickled

Handcuffs and feathers

Bursting into laughter

Delightfully ticklish

Vibrating tickle toys

Please, have mercy

Side squeezes

The tickle monster

Stay perfectly still

No escape

Ticklish secret

A thorough tickling

Does it tickle?

Belly laughter

A knowing smirk

Firm and gentle grip

Wiggling toes

Ticklish punishment

Ticklish praise

Tracing slow circles

Well, well...

Tears of laughter

Fits of giggles

Counting out loud

Cheeks flushing pink

Ticklish anticipation

Bum squeezes

Hold still

Shivers down your spine

Ticklish little girl

Playful tickling

Oh, does that tickle?

Nervous laughter

Beard tickling

Merciless tickling

Threatening to tickle

Caught you

Ticklish torment

Breathless little giggles

This is going to tickle

Belly squeezes

It tickles so much

Mischievous grin

Hold up your arms

Ticklish sensations

Discovering tickle spots

You're blushing

Kicking and struggling

Feather tickling

Inescapable tickling

Ticklish everywhere

Giddy laughter

Gentle teasing voice

Ticklish bliss

I can't take it

Trying to bargain

Is someone a bit ticklish?

Vulnerable and exposed

Ticklish exploration

Stifling a laugh

Playful protests

Trembling with anticipation

Oily belly

Scrubbing brush

No mercy

Sensual tickling

Pulsing tickles

Skittering tickles

Between the toes

Under the arm

How much does it tickle?

Tickle massage

Chin tickling

Giddy squeals

Tsk, tsk

Skilled, precise fingers