Until he got to this new school that is. Now he envied his classmates their self-assurance. How they knew so many of the little things that marked themselves as independent. When he wasn't jealous of his fellow students, he was frightened of them. The way that some of them looked at him! He knew what they were thinking of, or at least he thought he did. The looks he got from the girls made sense to him. But if he was right, why did he see the same in the eyes of some of the boys? Will was sure that no boy at home ever gave him looks like those. Or if they did he never noticed them.

Will was wandering the countless aisles of countless stacks of countless books in one of the many rooms of the library. He headed to the section on history. History was a favorite subject when he needed to relax. Now would be a good time to read a little history. For some reason he had been jumpy all day. Will liked looking back at the past.

He was considering a nice and thick book on Charlemagne when he felt someone watching him. Will craned his neck around until he saw who it was.

At the far end of the shelf of books he was standing by was a man. Will noticed first he was clearly too old to be one of the undergrads. Perhaps a professor. And he was so dark. His hair was black enough to absorb the harsh fluorescence from the ceiling. His chin was speckled with stiff dark bristles. His thick black brows came to a point that drew Will's attention right into the seriousness of the man's eyes.

Will looked away and fast. He didn't know what the man wanted from him, but he knew that being looked at that way tied his stomach into knots. But he kept watch from out the corner of his eye. He could only see the sleeve of the man's black jacket and the hands beneath them; the large hands with strands of dark hair near the knuckles.

The man was moving towards him! Will was positive that the stranger was casually inching his way down the aisle, his eyes on Will all the time. Frozen with indecision and panic, Will would have crawled onto the shelves in front of him if he could. He pretended he was thoroughly absorbed in the books at eye level. He hoped that if he ignored the man he would go away. Yet the dark man just kept getting closer. The smell of leather suddenly filled Will's nostrils. It's sharp snap woke him from his trance of fear. He jerked his head in the direction of the dark man and glared at him with all the fury his trembling body could muster. The dark man was so startled by what he saw in Will's eyes he almost stumbled backwards. Will suddenly noticed that the man had been smiling. Then the man's smile faded and he looked almost apologetic. He muttered something which Will did not catch. (Was it: "sorry my mistake"?) Then he turned and almost fled down the aisle turning the corner and disappearing into the books. As the man walked away, Will noticed his powerfully muscled legs and the leather boots they flowed into. Will was sure he had never seen any boots quite like them before.

Will tried to catch his breath. He was gasping for air. He had no idea what had just happened, who the man was or what he wanted. Unable to resolve his confusion, Will pretended that everything was OK. He reached out in front of him and pulled the first book off the shelf that touched his hand. He looked at its cover and saw his face. The angle of the lights from above made a mirror from the plastic skin that protected the book's dust jacket. It reflected Will's face back at him. Will saw himself and realized how shaky he was. There was a slick of sweat on his forehead that dampened his fine blond hair. And there still were traces of panic in his handsome blue eyes. And right there along the side of his firm jawline was the vein that always throbbed whenever he was stressed. He tried again to control his nerves.

Will looked at the book in his hands: "A History of Torture". Will blinked to clear his eyes. He couldn't believe what he saw. The cover of the book was lurid and sloppy. This was part of the University's book collection? It seemed like purest trash. Will knew exactly what kind of people read books like this and what for. Their immoral lusts and perversions fed on "literature" like this. He almost felt appalled enough to complain to the librarian.

The book's cheap paper was heavy. He shifted it from right hand to left to put it back on the shelf. His grasp slipped and the book opened. Will read the top of the page it opened to.

The ingenuity of torturers cannot be underestimated. Throughout the ages every facet of the human experience has been exploited in one form or another to allow certain individuals to gain a hold over their fellows. Nothing was overlooked that might allow one man to bend another to his will. There is no better illustration of this than the phenomenon of tickling. This playful physical response has been perverted time and time again into a means of incredible duress. Across centuries and cultures countless sadists have realized that tickling can actually be turned into a particularly brutal means to control or punish their victims.

Will slammed the book shut and shoved it back on the shelf. He marched out of the library enraged and disgusted.

*****

That night, asleep in his dormitory bed, Will had bad dreams.

In a palace in Imperial China:

Will was also in bed. But not asleep. He was in fact in mortal terror. His hands and feet were tied tightly to the posts of an enormous bed. Will looked down at his body and did not recognize it. He knew that it was himself but also a young Asian man. Slim, with finely etched muscles. He did not understand how he could be himself and yet not himself. He was naked and saw the silky black hair that surrounded his genitals. Dried cum was spattered along the muscles of his lower belly.

Will looked up from the strange body that had become his own. His surroundings were as startling as his transformation. In a revelation he suddenly understood what was going on.

He was in the estate of the powerful Mandarin Li-Shang. Will was a scholar who had been charged with tutoring the Mandarin's young son, Po, but had fallen in love with the angelic boy. In a madness of desire the scholar had taken the boy right in the Mandarin's own bedchamber. There they had been discovered and now the scholar was about to pay for his indiscretion. Look: There was the Mandarin himself pacing back and forth in fury at such betrayal in his own house--his own rooms! There was the bewitching Po, sobbing and still naked since his father had refused to let him dress so that all present could witness his shame. And a sight he was since the lovers had been surprised before the hot-blooded Po could reach climax. The youngster had been so aroused that even now his erection still pulsed for all to see. The luxurious room was crowded with the indignant members of the Mandarin's household. They were waiting for the man who would carry out the punishment to fit this crime. The Mandarin had summoned the Royal Torturer.

Will desperately tried to protest that somehow something terribly strange had happened. But he could not speak. He twisted frantically at the bondage that fastened him tightly to the sumptuous bed. He watched as his strong, unfamiliar arms failed to rip apart the imprisoning silk ropes that pinioned him to the frame.

While he struggled, the Royal Torturer entered the room. The sudden quiet of the onlookers sent a chill through Will's body, freezing the sweat of his exertions. The crowd around the bed parted and Will saw the fearsome new arrival. Will stared at the man. In colorful eastern robes with the bearing of authority and power. Will knew he had never seen a face like that before but he felt somehow that he knew the man. A recent encounter that right now he could not recall.

Will was mortified to be laid out like this for the casual inspection of the other man. He had a sneering expression that suggested Will was not human. Just another job. The latest in a series, number such-and-such. The torturer briefly consulted with the Mandarin. They discussed options, possibilities. Then a nod and a decision. The Torturer approached Will. He began to roll the vivid sleeves of his ornate robes. Time to get to work.

The Torturer knelt on the goose down cushion and straddled the helpless Will. He brought his hands high above his own head and began a slow, deliberate descent to his palpitating victim. They were headed straight for Will's exposed and defenseless armpits.

From a dim corner of the room a cry escaped from Po. He was in agony to see his beloved treated this way. He shouted out again with such ferocity that his whole body shook, sending drops of lube cascading from the spout of his erection to spatter and steam on the chilly tile floor. Although Po was speaking in a foreign, ancient tongue, Will understood the boy all too clearly.

"Not that! Stop, please stop! He can't stand it! He is insanely ticklish!!"

In the moment before the Torturer's hands set down onto Will's tender skin he knew it was true. To be tickled in the armpits would surely drive him mad.

The Torturer's fingers were soft like petals. Their velvet pads grazed along creamy the skin that was just above Will's ribcage and began a slow slide over the rise that led into the downhill journey towards the hollows of Will's armpits. Despite himself, Will looked down at the body he was in. Unable to ignore the approaching torture. Butterflies of ticklishness appeared in Will's belly. Through his clenched jaws, little giggles burst forth. He blushed furiously at the girlish sounds forced out of him against his will. His heart stopped. Now they were there. The Torturer's hands were in Will's hairy armpits.

The satiny touch of the fingers changed. Will jumped as if he had be burned by fire! Suddenly, the Torturer's hands were alive as little animals. Digging and poking into the stiff black hairs of Will's ticklish armpits. Will shrieked as the first sensations assaulted him. Uncontrollable laughter explode from deep inside his belly. Oh God!, he thought, I never knew it could be like this! His body flung itself any way it possibly could to dislodge the torturer that sat atop him, focusing those malevolent hands along the cords and muscles of his ticklish pits. The fingers became pincers as they dug in. Poking and prodding him into a madness of endless ticklish sensations.

Will looked through his teary eyes into the glinty ones of the Torturer. Suddenly, Will knew that he was not just another job for this man. The Torturer was completely enjoying himself, being satisfied on some deep level that Will could not even comprehend. But he could see how much pleasure the Torturer found in the tickling. And how Will had no hope of mercy.

The Torturer's hands sped up now. Impossibly faster that moments ago, the ten fingers seemed to be a hundred as they tickled, teased, and toyed with each inch of the sensitive skin in Will's hairy armpits. They were everywhere at once, driving the young man into an intolerable frenzy.

The evil fingers worked rapidly to infuriate the young man with their intense teasing. Making him laugh when he did not wish to laugh. Making him beg for a rest when he did not wish to beg. Making him gasp for breath when he did not wish to gasp. The Torturer was in charge of Will. And was forcing him to do whatever he decided to have him do.

Will's nerves were at the breaking point. The Torturer's fingers were plucking at the ticklish hollows of Will's armpits, focusing right at the excruciating sensitivity of the underneath part of the pectoral. Their manic motions sent the tickling feelings rolling over him in waves. He was washed in the tides of the Torturer's skill. Will's flesh was betraying him, turned against him under the Torturer's deft strokes.

Will began sobbing. Helpless to resist, he was in the power of a pitiless man who knew how to manipulate his poor defenseless body with maximum cruelty. He could not fight and felt his sanity leaving him. He was laughing one moment and sobbing the next as the Torturer toyed with him to feed his delight in the cruel tickling of such a handsome and responsive young man. They aren't all so sensitive!

Suddenly another scream rode over the sounds of Will's suffering. Will yanked his head to the corner of the room. He saw naked Po, determined to spare his lover from more agony, leaping with clenched fists at the fiendish torturer. And then all Will could remember was darkness.

*****

In the realm of the heretic Moors:

Will's vision returned. But his first sensation was not sight, but the throbbing of his taut shoulders. No wonder they ached. His wrists were suspended high above his head, tied with coarse hemp to an ingenious polished wooden frame. Will's toes were barely able to keep touch with the dirt floor below him. His body weight strained all his pressure points. The intense heat of the desert air drew the perspiration in sheets from his straining form. And as Will looked down and traced the salty rivulets along his frame, he saw a body he did not know as truly his.

This body was coal black and muscled. Sleek with the sheen of sweat, every carved muscle was outlined and gleaming. A massive form, but exhibiting grace with every lithe effort to maintain balance while dangling from the wooden frame. His labored breathing expanded his powerful torso, etching the indentations of his abdominals. The intake of breath elevated his pectorals with their prominent nipples: as large as a child's finger.

Looking down Will saw shockingly large genitals. A mammoth cock and balls swayed with every one of his attempts to ease the strain on his arms. Curlicues of black hair decorated the thick organs, but were not to be found anywhere else on his body. Despite Will's racking discomfort, every motion sent tiny shudders of need through him. This body had been deprived of release too long.

With a chill as if touched by ice in this burning desert air, Will suddenly knew who and what he was. He was a captive of the Caliph Akaar B'Kai. The powerful ruler of the oasis where Will was imprisoned. The Caliph had purchased Will from a slave trader who had captured him during a raid in the African heartland. The Caliph was transfixed by the power and appearance of Will's body when he had seen him in the Moroccan slave market. But although purchased, Will could not be owned. He had refused the Caliph's sexual advances and had tried to escape several times. The Caliph's infatuation had given way to cold fury. He had already sold Will to a Sultanate to do manual labor, but before delivery, he was determined to revenge himself on the arrogant black who had spurned him.

A scuffle on the sand outside. With a billowing flourish of the distinctive flowing garments of desert dwellers, the Caliph and his regal entourage entered the tent. His importance was displayed in the ornaments that decorated his clothes and the imperious bearing that defined his strides. Certainly, Will's rejection of the Caliph was not based on any physical defect of the man's. He was tall, well-formed with complexion burned bronze by the North African sun. His dark hair was gleaming with perfumed oils. His chin was speckled with stiff dark bristles. The Caliph's dark eyes glittered with the thirst for revenge. There were none of the alluring lights of desire which Will had previously seen in those eyes. But Will could barely look at him without feeling a physical revulsion. He did not know why, except that he had met him... before.

The Caliph wasted no words on his former slave. He knew that they spoke no common language. But he summoned one of his lackeys to his side and gloated over his plans for his prisoner.

"The impudence of this dog is beyond measure. To think that he dared to make advances toward me! A potentate of the wild desert does not consort with chattel! He shall regret he ever dared express his outrageous appetites. Summon the Feather Boys."

The lackey suppressed a malicious smile. He knew quite well whose appetites were the outrageous ones. But he cared not. The Caliph Of The Oasis was more than able to rewrite realities, if he so desired. The slave was the aggressor, the Caliph the injured party. Very well. All this was of no importance compared to the spectacle they were all about to enjoy. The lackey called for the Feather Boys.

Four puppyish youths wearing only dusty loincloths entered the expansive tent with much commotion. Their eyes were bright black dots above eager smiles. Three had sparse silky growth on their upper lips, asserting progress toward manhood. The fourth was so advanced as to actually be able to shave each week! They were at that special time of youth which shines with ruthlessness.

They knew why they had been summoned. The oasis had been alive with rumors that the Caliph's new pet was not at all cooperative. As soon as they heard for sure that he had been sold, they knew the Caliph would call them. They knew how to hurt without damage. Such a service was specially valued by the depraved ruler of the oasis.

But Will knew none of this. As an outsider to the ways of these people he was thoroughly puzzled by the snickering youths who came before him. And his desperate situation did not quell the rage he felt at being strung up and exhibited for all these followers of the twisted Caliph. As the youngsters gathered around him and gawked at his magnificent physique, Will let out a thunderous roar and did his best to rattle the bonds of wood and fiber that stretched him into an ebony X.

This startling display quieted the ring of boys. They so used to being feared by the Caliph's subjects that pleas for mercy were the sounds they mostly heard. This black giant's show of defiance caught their interest. To break this one will be an extra special joy!

The Caliph and his gabbling followers seated themselves on damasked cushions to enjoy the spectacle about to happen. They began to chat and eat while the Feather Boys prepared.

Will watched growing more and more nervous as the boys huddled in a corner arguing and fussing over a basket of objects. He could not see what they were grabbing. Until they moved toward the candlelit center of the tent. And then the strong man groaned.

Each of the young imps was carrying a large ostrich feather. They grinned maliciously as they approached the helpless Will. The black man stretched and flexed as he tried yet again to break his bonds and flee the impending torture. The feathers in their hands waved ever so slightly in the hot breezes passing through the tent. The fronds looked soft enough to soothe yet sharp enough to slash. And the boys carried them with the assurance of one who has his hands on a trusted weapon.

The Caliph swallowed the mouthful of food he was gulping and spoke sharply to his minions. Will did not understand what he said, but the Feather Boys did:

"Go after that deformed cock and balls of his. He thinks everyone is so interested in them. Show him what you think!"

The boys needed no prodding. Indeed the oldest, whose name was Ali, had been unable to take his eyes off the magnificent cock of the slave as it bobbed with each of Will's attempts to free himself. The smell of the sweat coming off the older man had inflamed his own erection. The tip was just peeping over the top of his loincloth. He stepped up to Will and reached out his ostrich feather.

Will moaned at the first delicate stroke against him. The very edge of the feather grazed him with its cool softness. Trailing from the tightly curled hairs of his lower belly, along the serpentine shaft, to finally diddle against his swaying testicles. Will felt al the tension on his strapped limbs metamorphose into a yearning need. The feather to promised release and his body responded. A few more strokes of Ali's feather coaxed a throbbing erection from the loins of the Caliph's captive. Ali continued to sweep his feather all over the shaft, tracing the pumping veins. The youthful Ali was dumbstruck at the sight of the engorged penis. He had never even imagined such masculinity. A dark thought unfolded in his mind. To have power over such manliness is as good as having it oneself. He was determined to make this one suffer as no one had ever suffered before.

The other three boys were younger than Ali and thought it all most magnificent fun. They circled the palpitating Will and applied their feathers, giggling. Here, a brush against the purple crown of his hardon. There, a flick against the steely shaft. Again, a gliding trace against the seam that divides the ridged sac. The four feathers seemed a thousand.

The desire provoked by the first stroke had shifted into a knot beneath Will's inflamed genitals. The light touches of the feathers could only stoke his arousal, not quench it. No release. Agony of wanting. An endless tease that strings out his frustration until his heart pounded hard enough to burst.

The subtle teasing of his swollen sex continued. Like an itch outside of his reach, Will had no choice but to endure the flicking feathers as they probed and toyed with every inch of his hot hard skin. Will feared the Feather Boys now. He knew them for what they were: master torturers.

Then, a subtle sign went out from Ali to his cohort of torturers. The next phase of their scheme began.

The Feather Boys quickened their strokes. Their wrists blurring as they intensified the energy of their abuses. Will's whole body jerked as if he had been struck. Moments ago they had been squeezing him in a maddening grip of unrequited sexual heat--a butterfly on a pin. Now, the feathers felt different...they tickled. Will began to jerk and twitch as the quick strokings grazed him everywhere.

It broke his pride, but he began to laugh. He had to. Despite his clenched jaws he couldn't stifle the waves of rolling hysteria that barreled out of his massive chest. The mean little feathers flicked and fluttered their fluffy points against his smooth dark skin. Every touch at his upstanding erection or low-hanging balls tightened his face into another grimace of laughter. The feathers crawled through his pubes leaving trails of gooseflesh. And when Ali fluttered his feather against the nerve threads underneath the massive cockhead--that tickled worst of all.

How cruel to make a grown man giggle like that! To force him to wheeze and twitter and try so desperately to yank himself out of the reach of such seemingly harmless touches. But if the feathers had been rawhide whips, they would not have made Will leap so.

He was not the only one laughing. The wicked Feather Boys gleefully tittered at how low they had brought their proud, masculine victim. Their sharp eyes did not leave him for a moment as they sought out new points to apply their weapons. Ali was most intense of all. Shivering with heat, he lost no opportunity to explore each centimeter of Will's sex organs. At the same time, shaking his own hips in order to roll his pulsing hardon against the soft loincloth fabric. He kept at it until the velvety opening drooled with excitement.

Will was on the verge of panic. He knew the Caliph had only one goal in mind: to make the slave suffer. Will was not a warrior with valuable information to trade for mercy, or gold pieces with which to buy release. There was no way to get them to stop. None at all. He suddenly realized when his new owner was supposed to claim him: three days from now.

Gods! Will thought. They mean to keep this up for three entire days! His mind became filled with a fearsome image of an endless line of grinning boys that stretched out the tent and through the oasis until lost from sight. Each carried a feather.

But even this horrific thought was interrupted when the skillful Ali found an especially ticklish area behind Will's balls. Will threw his head back at the new assault and barked out another tortured peal of laughter.

The Caliph was very pleased. And yet, he wanted more. More ways to degrade his prisoner. A comical idea occurred to him. He called out to the tent full of onlookers.

"What made me ever think that this creature in front of us was a man? You can see from his enormous pole that he is really a donkey! You there, small one, how would you like to ride a donkey? "

The Caliph pointed out the smallest of the Feather Boys. A youth who was applying his feather to Will's scrotum with such intense concentration, he almost didn't realize he was being spoken to. He stopped and stared at the Caliph, startled.

"Yes, you! Shed those poor excuse for breeches and mount the donkey here!" The Caliph was amusing himself greatly. To see that stripling youth have what was surely his first intercourse by penetrating the ebony giant, would be humorous beyond words. The youngster had no desire at all to get any closer than he was to the prisoner. But the Caliph must be obeyed. He began to undo his tattered clothes.

"MINE! MINE!", a strangled cry cut through the fetid air inside the tent. The Caliph looked at Ali. Ali was clutching his feather tightly enough to crush it. The Caliph saw that the boy was consumed with possessive lust. One look at his eyes told you he was out of control. The Caliph was furious.

"Stand away, brat. I have spoken." But Ali was beyond hearing. The prisoner must be his and his only. He tossed aside the fractured plume and snatched a scimitar from the Caliph's guards. He slashed away at the ruler's soldiers, beginning a battle within the fragile structure. The Caliph and his entourage fled. The remaining Feather Boys, finally, abandoned their brutal games. And Will, whose strength had been tested beyond its limits, fainted. His body still suspended from the imprisoning structure while consciousness fled.

*****

In a New World of colonies:

They had hoped to leave behind evil and imperfection to enter a place of perfect harmony. But the Puritans who had built their Utopian communities in North America, soon found evil in their midst. Evil that must be ruthlessly dealt with.

Will was about to receive a rather tactile lesson in Early American history. His mind cleared and he discovered himself sitting in Salem, Massachusetts. A breathtaking landscape of springtime green spread before him. A view he would be in a better mood to appreciate if he was not strapped into a stocks. That's what they do to persons who have just been convicted of "consorting with and most heinously abetting witches in their practices of unspeakable evil".

Will had plenty of time to examine the planks and hasps, bolts and struts that formed the sturdy construction that held him so tightly. The Judge stood close by him reading an endless speech from a scroll of parchment in a voice that boomed out over the straggling crowd of townspeople. Part indictment, part sermon, part sentence, Will somehow knew this white-haired man was not to be taken seriously. He was not a true enemy. Scanning the crowd, Will saw the person whom he really feared. There at the edge of the gathering stood the dark man. Even at this distance, his eyes seemed cold enough to make Will shiver on this balmy day. Will knew that it was the dark man who had gotten him into these punishing restraints. The false accusations of witchcraft were a diversion to cover the fact that Will had uncovered the gruesome truth that the dark man had raped and murdered another colonist, a special friend of Will's. And now the dark man was counting on a travesty of justice to ensure his safety and to continue his status as a citizen beyond reproach. The judge's speech was finally done. With a grand gesture he turned to the dark man.

"Reverend Night, would you speak to the question at hand? Your words themselves are weapons in the battle against the Devil's works!"

Moving to the center of the crowd, Reverend James Night clasped his testament firmly in his cool, dry hands and spoke to the crowd in a pleasing voice. " Today we are to witness a simple fact of life. For crime there is punishment, for evil there is retribution. The greatest retribution, the final retribution is the Lord's, but as his servants on earth it is also our duty to apply his laws within our communities. So it will be with our brother Samuel here today. For some of you who have never seen the likes of this, it may seem a ghastly fate. But let me remind you that for a great sin only a great punishment will be sufficient to expiate."

Will began to pull and tug at the straps that held him in place. He did not want to know what "ghastly fate" the criminal preacher had in mind. But the stocks were unyielding. He was sitting fully dressed in the rough, grey, simple cloth of a prisoner. The planks beneath his buttocks were hard and the ropes that tied his hands behind his back were coarse enough to scrape his wrists. The leather straps that bound his ankles were tight. The wooden planks that surrounded his ankles had holes cut to protrude his feet through. But as tightly as the straps and planks held his ankles in place, they had been skillfully arranged to make sure there was no numbness in his extremities. No numbness. Everything must be experienced thoroughly.

Reverend Night's voice had stopped and prickles of sweat erupted on the back of Will's neck. Now they are going to start it.

A signal from the Reverend set two gaolers upon their tasks. They were two young men that Will had known, been friends with. But in their cold eyes as they approached he saw the poison of the slanders against him. There would be no hope of help from his former friends. They had all been convinced by the sincere Reverend that Will was a friend only to Satan. But these thoughts fled Will's mind when the two men began to remove his shoes.

Heaven help me!, Will thought. Please, Lord, not that!

Will recalled a time when he was a young boy. Living a little outside the center of the colony he had heard a distant sound of laughter. A twisted, horrible laughter that chilled him with terror. He asked his father what was making that sound. He was told only to "pray he never had to find out". Years after, Will did find out. And he never forgot the sound of that piteous laughter.

Now it would be his turn to laugh.

The gaolers unfastened Will's shoes and stripped them off his twitching feet. Next their strong, farmer's hands peeled off the damp stockings and tossed them aside. Will stared over the wooden plank at his exposed feet. The skin was pink and smooth. Warm flesh that was such a contrast to the wood and leather that held them in place. A breeze wafted over the soles of Will's feet. A shudder passed through him. He felt a tightness grip his heart. His feet were so sensitive ...

Will was mesmerized by the appearance of his own feet, as if he had never seen them before. It was their pathetic vulnerability that seemed so strange to him. At size eleven, they had always seemed so sturdy and reliable in the past. Another part of his young, healthy body that he could count on to get work done. Now, bound to the splintery wooden frame by the stained leather straps, they seemed to be asking for abuse. The pink-tipped toes with the clean and carefully trimmed nails. The subtle blue streams of the veins. The powerful tendons that tie the whole package together like cords. How fragile. Who would not want to torture them! It suddenly seemed that was what they were made for.

From the corner of his eye Will caught a motion behind a hedge. The two gaolers were returning to the stocks. And by a stout rope they led a goat.

Will had known it was coming, but the sight of the approaching animal sent an extra pump of adrenaline through him. Again his heart pounded faster. He knew it was useless, but he struggled again with the ropes. He knew his efforts were pleasing the crowd who relished the sight of his terror. But he could not stay calm in the face of his approaching unjust punishment.

The goat was tied by its neck to the stocks, the lead rope strung through an iron ring and knotted. Its snout was bare inches away from Will's naked feet. His feet flexed as the goat's warm breath washed over his toes. The gaolers fetched the bucket of salt water. They carefully doused all of the exposed flesh of Will's feet with the hot brine. They did their best to give those pink extremities a thorough soaking. When the bucket had been emptied all over the prisoner, the gaolers stood aside to watch.

The goat was quick to notice the smell of salt. His nose twitched as he tracked down the tang to those strange objects right in front of his face. They did not look like the usual salt licks that his owners kept for him, but he tested them. The goat's rough hot tongue darted out to wetly scrape the pink flesh in front of him. It was salt. The goat's tongue vigorously lapped away.

The colonists who watched that day never forgot the sight of that wretched sinner as the goat's tongue began to wash his bare feet. How the man began by shouting "It tickles! It tickles!" How he burst into hysterical laughter that echoed throughout the surrounding hills. And the way he lapsed into hoarse wheezing as the goat relentlessly licked and licked. The colonists stayed on for quite a long time as this punishment session was an especially good one. But as the sun began to sink behind the leafy trees they dispersed to their homes.

Will was oblivious to the dusk that crept over him. He was screeching with laughter as the goat's tongue tickled away at his feet. He felt the wet surface drag over his tender soles and lap between his wiggling toes. The sharply pointed tongue moved in broad swaths from the heel of Will's foot to the ball. And then the goat's teeth would nibble at the triangles of flesh that bridged each toe. No inch was left untouched by the goat's hungry mouth.

Will begged and pleaded for the torture to stop. But as hard hearted as the cruelest human tormentor might be, this was far worse. The dumb animal had no knowledge of what he was doing to the human being fettered in the stocks. The goat could not pity Will or spare him. All the beast knew was that the salt was there for the taking and nothing was stopping him from getting it. The loud screams were only a distraction.

Alone with his uncomprehending torturer, Will could only wiggle his toes and ankles to try to chase away the persistent goat. No use. The tickling would continue for a long, long, time. Between hysterical gasps, Will cried out for someone to spare him from the unendurable sensations of the wet pointed tongue against his tender pink feet.

Then the darkness began to spread over the tortured man. And with it a new hell. Through his tears, Will saw other movements around his place of captivity. No! it couldn't be!

From the surrounding forest, other animals had smelled the salt. Woodland creatures had caught the scent on the breeze and wanted their share.

Immobilized by the bondage and his own hysteria, Will could only watch as the small animals crawled up onto the stocks and made their way to feast on his naked feet. Other tongues joined the goat's to tickle away at his bare feet. Their furry paws also adding to the maddening tickling of his exposed feet.

Will began howling like one of the very animals that were torturing him. The feelings that spread out from his tickled feet seemed to be transformed into hammer blows right on his overtaxed heart. That strained organ was beating faster and faster as the tickling, terror, and helplessness took its toll. Suddenly, a torch in the distance caught Will's eyes. He summoned up his last ounce of sanity and called out for mercy.

Then the figure approached nearer and his identity became clear. Under the circle of light carved by the torch from the surrounding darkness, Will saw James Night. The reverend was carrying another bucket of brine.

That was when Will felt his heart stop. And the light of the torch, the moon, and the reverend's evil smile went out.

And since it is true that if you die in your dreams you die in life, Will woke up. He was back in his bed at the college dormitory. He had no clear memory of his dreams. The pillow was damp with his sweat, the sheets were damp with his cum. He could feel three distinct spots, at least. And even so, his erection was upstanding against his palpitating belly. As he wobbled to his feet, he wondered what was wrong with himself. He resolved to try to read up on it that night at the library.