It’s a lot colder than usual this morning and you can’t seem to find your blanket. Did you throw it off while you slept? Wait… where’s the mattress?
You’re not in your bedroom anymore, nor anywhere familiar as becomes apparent when you open your eyes to the sight of naked stone walls lit by flickering torchlight - a cramped room devoid of decoration besides the frightening manacles dangling from the ceiling right above you.
First, you try to scream. Then, when you realize you are gagged, you attempt to remove the gag, and, finally, upon learning that your arms and legs are chained to the wooden plank you’ve been sleeping on, you panic.
Loud rattling fills your cell as you try in vain to break your chains while desperately calling out for help, hoping that you can somehow produce a sound loud enough to overpower the object that’s rendering your mute.
Think! What’s the last thing you can remember? Putting on your pajamas, brushing your teeth and sliding into the soft comfort of your bed. As far as you could remember, you hadn’t decided to renovate your bedroom into medieval torture chamber just before you dozed off.
As your lungs and limbs become tired, your ears pick up the faintest echo of a voice outside the chamber. You fall silent and listen - is someone out there? Help? Or perhaps someone awakening to a predicament just like yours. Whoever it might be, you wonder why they’re laughing hysterically…
Someone unlocks the door and opens it with a loud screech.
A strange man towers above you. He has the head of a hyena and is covered in blue fur with a rich green mane sprouting between his ears. He is dressed in a plain white shirt under an open leather jacket, hands resting inside the pockets of his jeans. His boots have what seems to you like an unnecessary number of belts. Behind him sways a strangle tail that shimmers like the night sky and splits off into endless hand-like appendages at the halfway point.
Is he your rescuer? Or your captor?
“Morning, sunshine! Sleep well? Name’s Nyarlathotep but you can call me Nyarl.”
Captor, then.
“I’m sure you have lots of questions but, to be blunt with you, I don’t feel like letting you talk so get used to the gag.” He spoke casually, like walking in on a cell with a confused and helpless person was something entirely normal to him. “But don’t you worry your pretty little head, baby. Instead of explaining what this place is about I’ll just show you! I’ve always been more of a visual guy myself.”
Nothing about this felt right and the apparent levity in the strange hyena’s words set off alarms in your head. He unties your chains and pulls you up to your feet. Before you can start thinking about escaping, he pulls your arms behind your back and cuffs them together.
“How about I give you a tour of the place?”
You are led out of your cell and into a long corridor with many doors - presumably to other cells like the one you were in. At the end of the corridor is a dizzying spiral staircase which you are instructed to climb. With each step you take, the sound of laughter gets closer and it becomes clear that its origin is not a single person but many. Every possible kind of laughter, from roaring to squealing, booming to ragged. It echoes from whatever destination Nyarl is leading you to. You catch a glimpse of him looking at you with a devious grin plastered on his face. Whatever his intentions are, it is clear that he is enjoying himself.
After what felt like an eternity of climbing, you finally reach the top of the staircase and step out into another corridor, this one much less dank and gloomy than the last. The floor had a luxurious red carpet and there were beautifully sculpted statues of various anthropomorphic creatures bathed by the light cast from chandeliers.
“And this is our stop!”
Nyarl halts by an ornate wooden door adorned with a sculpture of a dog’s head in the middle. You can hear laughter on the other side. What’s going on? Is there a really good comedy show being performed on the other side? Perhaps a laughing gas leak? Clown convention? You are about to find out as Nyarl opens the door for you.
“Welcome to the Canine Room, baby!”
It’s not a comedy. In fact, it’s a lot closer to a horror show. Half a dozen anthros hollering in distress as they are - of all things - tickled. They wear little to no clothes, presumably to expose more of their ticklish areas, and many are bound, restrained, or otherwise trapped in strange devices. And if that isn’t weird enough, then the small platoon of Nyarlathoteps tickling them sure is! There are at least as many exact copies of the hyena in the room as there are men being tickled. The air inside is hot and humid, like the locker room of a gym, and there aren’t any windows or ventilation.
It looks like a veritable Renaissance painting - everywhere you look there’s something going on.
You feel Nyarl’s hand on your shoulder.
“A bit overwhelming, isn’t it? Don’t mind all the ‘me’s, you’ll get used to us.” Somehow you doubt you will. “How about we look at all of my precious doggies one-by-one?”
Still stunned by the spectacle, you allow yourself to be led by the hyena towards a pair of wooden stocks that hold a red and white wolf in it. The large canine throws his head back in laughter as two Nyarls lick and nibble the soles of his massive paws ravenously - toes curling and splaying madly as those raspy tongues and pointy teeth explore the breadth of the wolf’s paw-pads, including the tiny vestigial pad below the main one.
“Plehehease! Hehehelp mehehe!” the wolf begs as he looks at you with tears in his eyes, fur matted with sweat that you estimate has accumulated over many hours of paw tickling.
“This big boy here is Crispy! He’s new just like you but already one of my loudest pups.”
Your blood runs cold at the realization that this must be the fate that awaits you. If such a strong-looking wolf can be reduced to tears by tickling then so can you. Nyarl continues: “We found out a neat thing you can do to shut him up.”
Just then, both clones nibble Crispy’s toes in a very deliberate manner. The poor Wolf’s eyes look like they’re about to burst from their sockets. And then…
“AAAAHAHAHA-…”
Silence. Every single muscle in the wolf’s toned body tenses up and he is falls into silent laughter.
“Cool, huh? Shuts him up every time-”
“AAAHAHAHAHAHA”
“-for a bit, anyway. Let’s move on.”
Next, he presents you with a barrel-chested grey wolf dressed in ripped black clothes. His huge arms are tied above his head with a chain that dangles from the ceiling. The poor canine hops from foot to foot while one of Nyarl’s clones scratches his exposed armpits. He is blindfolded but you can see the stains of what must be his tears on the piece of cloth.
“Vortex here thought he was hot shit. A few pokes to his pits and he folded like a lawn chair.”
In addition to scratching the wolf’s pits, the clone also used the appendages that sprouted from his tail to tickle his belly - some even wield hairbrushes and other instruments which confirms your suspicion that they do indeed work like hands… a terrifying realization given the ticklish nature of your predicament.
“Oh, and speaking of hot shit. Let me introduce you to my friend WereGarurumon. Bit of a mouthful, right? I’ve just been calling him Garu for short.”
He gestures towards a large, white werewolf hogtied on the floor, silenced by a very appropriate bone-shaped gag while a clone sits on a chair next to him and playfully drags a brush along his back and another over the soles of his large feet. His feet are so large, in fact, that another clone is dragging feathers between his tied toes. No paw-pads, strangely. As you pass by him, he gives you the most adorable puppy-dog eyes you have ever seen - a stark contrast to his otherwise tough appearance.
Although you would not admit it even if you could speak, you did find this one quite cute.
Next, Nyarl takes you to the only canine who is not bound, restrained or otherwise tied up in any way. Instead, the small gray and blue border collie tries desperately to resist the small army of Nyarls swarming him and tickling every bit of him they can get their hands on.
“Stohohop! L-let mehehe gohoho!”
“And why would I do that, Khoury? You look like you’re having so much fun, baby!”
The dog does not look like he’s having fun to you. Fun doesn’t make you try to desperately crawling away from the hands and tails that squeeze your sides, dig into your pits, scratch your tummy and brush the soles of your feet. Looking at that poor collie makes you shrink like you can somehow feel what he’s feeling.
You force yourself to look away and your gaze happens to fall on a metallic table near the corner of the room with another wolf strapped to it.
“Ah, did Talbain catch your eye? He sure caught mine.”
You approach the table and take a closer look at the werewolf. He is lean but well built, covered mostly in shaggy white fur marked by light blue accents on his head, arms, chest and tail. He howls with laughter as Nyarl’s clones tickle him with backscratchers, chiefly focusing on his sides and on the soles of his feet - yet another wolf with no paw pads! Is that a werewolf thing?
“Awwwroooohohoho!”
“Talbain here is a werewolf. And in case you’re wondering, no it’s not a full moon tonight.” Nyarl laughs. “In fact, there is no moon here. Not tonight and not ever!” He grabs Talbain’s toes and bends them back before tickling the space underneath them, causing the werewolf to howl again. “He stays in his werewolf form because I want him to. No moon needed.” He lets go of his toes and gives you an innocent looking smile. “But I still put him on a silver table. Fits his theme, don’t you think? Just like those guys over there!”
He grabs your arm and pulls you along until you’re face-to-face with two men - a fox and a wolf - strapped to elaborate metal chairs that keep their arms spread and their bare paws locked in stocks mounted at the footrest. Not even their toes are safe as a loop of elastic string holds each digit straight against the stocks. While a Nyarl clone stands between them and tickles their exposed torsos with his hands, you can clearly see that the bulk of their torture comes from the strange machine mounted in front of their paws.
Ten red beams shine from a cluster of lenses down on their soles and you swear you can see smoke rising from the points where they make contact with their paw pads.
“You’ll never guess their names.” Nyarl laughs. “Fox and Wolf here were mortal enemies in their universe, if you can believe it. Here they are just two Guinea pigs for my tickle laser. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt them, but it does directly excite the nerves on their poor ticklish paws! I accidentally used it on myself once and oooh, boy! It took hours for my hand to stop tingling! I can only imagine how it feels as it constantly tickles their feet.”
You don’t need to imagine it. You can plainly see it in their faces. The lights are on but no one’s home. Both Fox and Wolf are laughing absent-mindedly, having evidently succumbed to the inhumane level of tickling that that laser delivered. At least you assume it’s that intense… you don’t want to find out for yourself.
Just next to them, kneeling on the floor with cuffs around his ankles and his hands locked in stocks, lies a red fox wearing nothing but a speedo as a clone simultaneously tickles his paws with his tail, his left side with his claws, and his ear with a toothbrush.
“Hahaha! P-Plehehease! Whatever t-this ihis abouhout. I-I’m innocehehent!”
“Ah, Nick Wilde. Quite the smooth-talker, this one. A man after my own heart,” Nyarl explained. “Kept trying to talk his way out of a good tickling. I thought about gagging him but I honestly kind of enjoy listening to his poor excuses. Makes this whole thing a little less dull, you know?’
‘Dull’ is hardly the word you’d use to describe the present situation. If anything, it made you queasy. You do not know any of these poor people but you feel sorry for each and every one of them. And tickling? Why are they being subject to such a childish torture? And why do they all look so broken by it? These are the thoughts that run through your mind as Nyarl leads you to the one tortured canine he is yet to introduce.
A large white wolf. As you step closer to the pole that he is tied to, you feel a strange uneasiness. That uneasiness turns to fear as you gaze into the wolf’s unnatural crimson eyes, like angry rubies etched into the snow-white fur.
He is worked over by two clones, one of which pokes around his torso while another one scratches his paws and wields a strange looking scythe with a feather in place of a blade.
The wolf laughs uproariously, like every other canine being tickled, but somehow you can’t shake the feeling that you should be getting as far away from him as possible. You take a step back but feel Nyarl’s hand stop you.
“Smell that? That’s fear of death, baby! Of Death!” He looks at the wolf, unphased. “Death. He’s a force of nature. You’re guaranteed to meet him sooner or later. Well… before I plucked him from his universe, that is. Now he’s just a ticklish little wolfy!”
Death! Death itself is being tickled silly right in front of you! Now you’re even more scared. Not just by the fact that you are very literally staring Death in the eye, but because you can’t fathom how Nyarl even accomplished such a feat.
You feel dizzy. None of this makes sense! The hyena walks you out of the chamber and shuts the door. You can still hear the muffled symphony of laughter, only this time you know exactly who’s voices compose it.
“Question time, baby: why do you think I’m tickling these all these guys?”
You cannot think of a good answer to that.
“No idea? I’ll give you some time to figure it out. In the meantime, why don’t I show you the Feline Room?”
Nyarl excitedly leads you to another wooden door, equally as embellished as the last, only with a tiger’s visage instead of a dog’s. Laughter emanates from the other side. He opens the door.
Much like the Canine Room, there is an impressive assortment of all sorts of felines all forced to laugh under a variety of dementedly creative tortures.
Right in front of the entrance, in an isolated segment of a wall, is a golden plaque embossed with the name ‘Shere Khan’. Above the plaque, on a wooden trophy mount, and being savagely brushed by one of Nyarl’s clones, protrude two big, squirming feline paws with snow-white soles and pink paw-pads. Above those paws, the head of the Bengal tiger they belong to pokes through crying tears of laughter.
You dare to peak behind the wall to find the rest of the tiger’s body awkwardly contorted on the other side - wrists tied together to prevent interference while another Nyarl clone playfully tickles his sides and armpits.
Before you can look for long, Nyarl pulls you over to another of his demented ’exhibits’.
“Meet Leomon,” he says as he overdramatically gesticulates to the lion-shaped mountain of muscle chained to the wall. A large red ball gag filled his square jaw as tears of laughter rolled from under his blindfold. His feet - massive enough to deserve a separate stockade made of thick wood for each of them - were being ravaged by a pair of clones. Each fist-sized digit was tied back and vulnerable for the clones to scritch and nibble till their sadistic heart’s content.
“He’s one of the largest-footed boys here, as you can see,” Nyarl remarked. “Just means more surface area to tickle. Sucks for him, huh? Say… what’s your shoe size?”
As if the intense foot tickling wasn’t enough, Nyarl had somehow seen fit to task another clone with tormenting Leomon’s bare torso.
“Oh, and on the topic of lions, let me introduce you to another one of my favorites.”
He takes you towards a wall with another trophy on it. Much like Shere Khan, you see a pair of large feline paws jutting out of an ornate wooden plaque with the head of the man they belonged to poking out above them. He was a young lion with piercing-adorned ears and an orange feather attached to one of them.
“Say hi to Max!”
“AHAHAHA! TURN THEHEM OHOHOHOFF!”
What the poor lion is undoubtedly referring to is the powerful pair of polishers automatically scrubbing his pink paw-pads. They shimmer with a coat of what you guess might be oil.
“Aww, but then I wouldn’t be able to hear your cute laughter anymore!”
“I-IT’S TOHORTUHURE!”
“That’s the point, you silly kitty.”
Nyarl spoke as if acknowledging a self-evident truth. You really, really didn’t like the sound of that. You begin to wonder if these people are being kept here and tickled out of their minds simply for the hyena’s twisted amusement.
You look away from the young lion only for your gaze to land upon another, much older one, as you deduce from his aged white mane. He is sitting on a chair with his arms tied behind his back and his bare feet in stocks, laughing maniacally as a Nyarl clone cranks a feather roller with his tail while… singing?
“Clay Calloway, came my a-way! With big ticklish feet, oh what a treat!”
You posit that the horrible noises coming out of the clone’s mouth may be an attempt at singing. And he is holding a microphone… That might be a worse punishment for the lion than the feather roller tormenting his paws.
Nyarl takes you to another lion, this one much less bound that the previous ones. He is standing up and bound in place by an iron belt tethered to the floor with chains. He struggles to hold his arms above his head a clone toys with his bare torso.
“Keep those arms up, Mayor Lionheart. You know what happens if you don’t.”
“Plehehese! Not my pihihits!” the lion begs as the clone pokes his exposed underarms.
“I love this game,” Nyarl says. “Do you know why?” He points to the ’exhibit’ directly in front of the lion. “Because he gets to constantly see what will happen to him if he loses.”
It’s another Bengal tiger. Locked in a tight straightjacket and heavily restrained to a chair with his bare feet locked in stocks. Blindfolded. The straightjacket is missing a bit in the front which exposes the tiger’s lower abdomen to the curious claws of a Nyarl clone while another uses his multi-ended tail to tickle his feet.
“NOT MY TOHOHOES!” he screams.
The tiger’s toes fight hard against the bits of string keeping them upright and spread as parts of the clone’s tail snake between them.
“Nerev there was the last player to lose the game. He didn’t want to have his pits tickled so now his pecs and paws are paying the price~”
You sincerely hope Nyarl doesn’t make you play that game. You know you have no chance of winning if he does.
As Nyarl leads you to the next twisted exhibit, you pass by a familiar scene of paws being licked and nibbled by the hyena’s clones as if they were a tasty treat. Those paws belong to a black panther with a gold earring, heavily restrained in a recliner while the clones feast on his feet.
“Are you sure you’re a panther, Ken? You’re sounding more like a hyena to me, baby,” teased one of the clones.
The scene reminds you of the red wolf in the Canine Room. Crispy, was it?
An ear-splitting scream.
You turn your head to its origin and find a golden feline with black hair with strands of black along his cheek fur and ear tips. A puma? A lynx?
“Ah, he finally broke!” Nyarl celebrates as he changes course towards the shrieking feline.
He sat locked in an uncomfortable-looking pair of double stocks from that held his wrists, ankles and neck, assaulted from every direction by clones. One teases his muzzle and ears with feathers while another claws at his ribs from behind. Two more tickle his feet with large brushes. His black paw-pads shimmer with a coating of oil - the same kind that lion Max was having polished into his own pads. You can only imagine how much more sensitive that makes them.
“Not so tough now, eh Jay?” Nyarl teased.
“PLEHEASE! I’M TIHIHICKLISH!”
“Yes, you are! You’re a ticklish little kitty cat!”
You are equally amazed and disturbed at how elated Nyarl is. He grabs you by the shoulder, causing you to yelp behind your gag.
“Now come on. There is something I’d like you to meet.”
He leads you to yet another strange contraption. It’s an oversized chair - more akin to a throne - with a pair of feet coming out of the armrests and a red-maned lion’s head poking out near the bottom. A clone sat on the chair, smothering the lion’s face with his bare feet while eagerly tickling the exposed soles with his claws.
“Meet my favorite footrest: Mufasa.”
In the sparse moments where you can see Mufasa’s face between the clone’s feet, you finally understand why Nyarl was so eager to present him.
The lion is the very incarnation of insanity.
His whole face is red as a tomato, fur drenched in sweat and tears. His smile does not look like a smile, but rather like a gruesome, exaggerated shape carved onto his very muscles. Demented. Permanent.
His toes splay and curl in rapid succession as the clone bends down to ticklishly lick the pads of one paw while scratching the other.
You desperately want to look away but you find yourself unable to. Each second of observation reveals another macabre detail that makes it clear just how much poor Mufasa is suffering.
“Crazy, huh?” Nyarl says. You flinch, being so transfixed by the spectacle that you forgot he was there. “Want to see the best part?”
He removes a side panel on the throne, giving you a window into the lion’s contorted body inside it. Your blood runs cold as you notice the interminable number of mechanisms violating every square inch of poor Mufasa’s body. From his pits to his sides, to his belly and his thighs, every bit of him is subject to some kind of poking, prodding, brushing, feathering, squeezing or pinching.
It’s revolting. Sickening.
You look at the contorted face of that poor, poor lion again and feel a deep sadness. At that moment, he was the antithesis of the pride his species typically represented.
“I’LL SIGN!!” he screamed. “I’LL SIGN, I’LL SIHIHIGN!!”
You cock a curious eyebrow. “Sign what?”, you wonder.
As you and Nyarl walk you out of the Feline Room, he explains: “I’m not heartless, baby. Cruel, but not heartless. Every one of my precious ticklish boys has a choice after a few days of coochie coos,” he makes his way towards another door behind which you are sure is another assortment of men from a common species being treated to the hyena’s sadistic creativity. He rests his hand on the handle and you can see there is an ursine head sculpted onto the door. “If they sign, that means they willingly submit themselves to me as tickle slaves. If not, well…” He smiles. “I give them some more time to think about it.”
He turns the handle and pushes the door open.
Like you expected, there are bears inside. A lot of bears. Each busy enduring their own unique tickle-torment. But unlike what you expected, not all of them are on the receiving end of the torment. There are two markedly blatant exceptions.
“Hi, Roy. Don Solletico,” Nyarl greets and the two bears nod in acknowledgement.
You realize Roy is the large polar bear with the red Santa hat and Don Solletico is the leaner brown bear in a black leather harness and a matching cap.
Both seem much too invested in tickling their respective victims to pay any attention to you.
Two brown bears are held in a pair of stocks while Roy diligently scrubs the soles of their large feet with correspondingly large brushes. One has thick eyebrows and wears a white judogi while the other is much chubbier and wears a green tunic with a matching cap sporting a red feather. They struggle to contain their laughter.
“C’mon, boys. You know you’re too ticklish to resist,” Roy teased. “You can’t take it on your toes, huh Little John? And how about you Juuichi? Do you mind if I brush here?”
At once, they crack up. First a smile, then a snicker, then a steady stream of uncontrollable giggles as their sensitive feet are brushed without mercy.
“Hehehehe! S-Stohop it!”
“Myhyhy feeheeheet!”
“Good boys! Feel the brushes on your feet and laugh for me!”
It appears that the polar bear enjoys the process of tickling others into submission as much as Nyarl himself.
Nearby, Don Solletico stands by the enormous feet of a strong-looking brown bear with a scar over his right eye, strapped down on a medieval-looking rack. Don cranks the handle of a fluffy roller which continuously brushes the pudgy soles.
“GRAHAHAHA!”
The bear seems unable to talk with all the laughing. In addition to the foot roller, a Nyarl clone teases his armpits which are left woefully exposed by chains tying his arms to the rack above his head.
“You aren’t going anywhere, Mr. Ben Bigger,” he spoke solemnly, as if tickling the large bear is a matter of great importance to him. “You will be tickled until you break and not a second less.”
“These two have been helping me out,” Nyarl explains. “Who better to tickle bears than their own kin, eh?”
You can’t disagree with that, but you wonder why these two would agree to torture their own species like that. Do they feel no kinship towards them? Or is the desire to tickle greater than the sympathy towards the tickled? You do not know.
“Bears are the best bear ticklers, but we still make an effort to learn! Let me introduce you to Vitkor.”
He leads you towards an examination table where a large polar bear, seemingly in his thirties or forties, is strapped down with medical restraints; naked. Next to him there is a whiteboard with a crude outline of his own body on it and another of what seems like the shape of his footprint. Certain areas of the outlines are colored in shades from yellow to red and heavily scribbled over. A small group of clones eagerly observes another, who is dressed in a lab-coat and silver-rimmed glasses, spread oil over the bear’s belly.
“…And remember to always tickle a bit when applying sensitivity oil. This will let you know if they have any hotspots and it also prevents them from resting!”
As he massages the clear substance into the bear’s large belly, he forms a claw with fingers and begins dragging his nails past the thick snowy fur, causing the bound bear to guffaw heartily although, surprisingly, he doesn’t appear to be fighting the restraints.
“GRAHAHAHA!”
“Would it surprise you to know he is here of his own free will?” Nyarl stated. “He’s a researcher or a physician of some sort. Doesn’t matter. All I know is he likes tickling so much he offered to help demonstrate some techniques to us.” He smiles slyly. “Don’t think he knew we’d be tickling him, but he hasn’t complained yet. He was even kind enough to bring us some tools and one of his uh… patients.”
The hyena points you to another large polar bear tangled in a mess of vines. The vines slither under his arms and between his toes like little snakes, almost as if they had a mind of their own. As you get closer, you begin to see that could be true. A pair of big round eyes lies nestled deep within the vines, gazing hungrily at the laughing ursine.
“Marvelous, Tangrowth!” you hear a nearby clone say. He is holding a strange red and white ball. “Tickle! Use tickle until Beartic faints!”
Spurred on by that command, the vines slither and wiggle faster, making the bear to squirm uselessly in their grasp as he cries with laughter.
“He brought a friend too, but you’ll meet him later. I have one more polar bear to show you. Come.”
The last polar bear in the room is mounted much like Shere Khan and Max had been in the Feline Room - in a wall trophy with his head and feet sticking out and being relentlessly tickled. The golden nameplate reads ‘Sodara’. Poor Sodara. Besieged by a small army of articulated arms which brush his helpless soles and feather his toes, ears, and his cute blue nose.
“Plehehehese! Stohohop!”
“There’s a machine on the other side tickling his tummy, if you care to know,” Nyarl says, bluntly ignoring the bear’s pleading. “But that’s enough polar bears for now. Tell me, how do you feel about pandas?”
You like pandas. Who doesn’t?
A large one hangs suspended from the ceiling with a harness made of thick rope. Additional loops enclose his wrists and ankles to facilitate the work of the pair of clones going absolutely apeshit on his exposed belly and upturned paws with their claws.
“Kitchy kitchy coo, Russie! My, such a big ticklish panda you are!”
“HAHA- HA! BWAHAHA!” The panda’s laughter was raspy and ragged. He struggled to breath. It was clear to you that he had been enduring this torture for many hours. “I-I’M TOO TIHICKLISH FOR M-MY OHOWN GOOHOOD!!”
“Too ticklish? There’s no such thing.”
He shared Mufasa’s panicked eyes - you could see his mind crumbling right before you. With each squeeze of his sides, each poke of his armpits, each scratch of his soles… Russie descended deeper and deeper into madness. Much like with the lion, you found yourself transfixed. Unable to look away.
Nyarl smiled. “Enjoying the show, eh? Don’t worry, there’s plenty more to see.”
You don’t know if you like the sound of that but drag yourself away from the polar bear anyway and onto the next demented exhibit.
“Hahaha! No! No, no! Now you’re tickling!” you hear from a portly sloth bear lying belly-down on the floor with his arms and ankles tied together, bucking madly under the pressure of the clone that sat on top of him and wiggled his fingers under his arms and over his ribs while another held his ankles in an armlock and skittered his claws across the squirming soles.
“I cahan’t stahand the tickling! Hehehelp!”
Whether or not he can stand it, it seems like the boor bear has no choice.
As you’re on your way out, you spot one last tortured ursine, a rather muscled black bear trapped in a leg curl machine with buffers attacking his pits and paws. Even as he is forced to endure the torture, he manages to complete his leg curls.
“That there is Urshifu. Bit of a gym rat, him. Was fine with being tickled on the condition that we make it a workout for him. Crazy but I’m not complaining.”
This place is getting weirder and weirder. You have a hard time fathoming how someone could volunteer to help tickle their own kind like Roy and Solletico, and an even harder one understanding the mindsets of Viktor and Urshifu who seemingly did not mind being on the receiving end of the torture.
As you both leave the chamber, Nyarl says: “I want to end our little tour by showing you a certain… special room. I think you’ll like it.”
Somehow, you doubt that.
“But, before that, there’s one more room I’d like you to see. Are there dragons in your world, by any chance?”
You steel yourself mentally as he leads you to a door with a wooden draconic head carved at eye-level. Before he opens it, you notice the door to the Bear Room open. It’s Russie and Viktor, both looking absolutely exhausted. They are handcuffed and being led somewhere by a pair of clones. You find yourself thankful for their momentary rest, but, somehow, know it won’t last.
You enter the Scaly Room.
The first thing you notice is the oversized iguana smack dab in the middle of the chamber. He’s twice your size and held by strange appendages… tentacles? Some appear organic, with skin of a strange, otherworldly purple hue, sprouting from a strange portal underneath him, holding his enormous feet by the ankles while licking their soles. Their mechanical counterparts descend from a large apparatus mounted to the ceiling and hold the reptile’s arms over his head while exploring the rough but sensitive scales of his upper body.
His jaws are clamped shut by a thick metallic device. Looking closer, you see it has a reservoir of some sort that shimmers with a fluorescent blue liquid.
“It’s Godzilla!” Nyarl exclaims, pointing at the large reptile and feigning surprise. You’re not sure why he did that. He laughs and recomposes himself. “Big boy, isn’t he? That’s why we’re drip-feeding him that shrinking potion through his muzzle. Not quite enough to make him our size but that wouldn’t be as much fun for us or the tentacles.”
For the second time today, you see what appears to be a mighty force of nature reduced to an impotent mess by mere tickling.
And you haven’t event looked at the other reptiles yet.
You peek behind Godzilla to find two dragons trapped in front of one another. One is bright purple and has yellow horns, wings, head spikes and belly. His feet are locked in stocks under funnels which drip a white liquid over his toes. It must be milk. Or at least that’s what you think would motivate the goats ravenously licking his bare soles.
“Plehehease! Nohot the gohohoats!” he laughs.
“S-Spyro, help, please!” the other dragon shouts. He is much bigger and his scales are a duller shape of purple that border on pale blue. Spikes grow from his square chin to form what looks like a full beard of solid keratin. He lies trapped within a strange quartz-like formation with only some of his limbs jutting out of it. “Get me out of here before it starts again!”
The crystal begins shimmering with an eerie light. Panic takes over the large dragon’s face.
“No! No, please I can’t take it!” At once, tiny bolts of lightning arc from the crystal and onto every bit of the dragon’s immobile limbs. He screams. “AAAHAHAHAH!”
“Bubba! Hahang in thehere!!” Spyro shouts.
Whatever that crystal did, it tickled. It tickled a lot. And, despite his mighty frame, Bubba could not break out of it.
“What do you think of the tickle crystal? We grew it ourselves right here in the castle. Really tickles something fierce when it’s charged up with laughter. Poor Bubba better shut up if he hopes to make it stop… Good thing Spyro is there to help charge it up!”
You curse Nyarl silently. The hyena is as sadistic as he is creative.
As you move away, you see a large jet-black dragon tied spread-eagle on the floor. Likewise, his large wings are spread and pinned down with thick leather straps, and his jaws are trapped shut in an iron muzzle not unlike the one Godzilla wore. Half of his tail fin was missing.
“Meet Toothless. I’d show you why he’s called that, but, for the safety of us both, we shouldn’t take off the muzzle.”
Muffled laughter echoed from under that piece of iron as Nyarl clones teased his wing membranes with backscratchers and his exposed belly with gloves lined with rough fibers along the palms - the sort one might use to brush a dog’s coat if that dog was the size of a small shack and had thick scales instead fur.
Next to poor Toothless stands a strange device - strange mainly because it doesn’t seem to be related to tickling in any way. An iron statue fashioned after the shape of a fat, almost cartoonish dragon with his arms raised above his head.
Not the sort of decoration you would pick for your own living room but far from the weirdest thing you’ve seen today… or so you thought.
A Nyarl clone approaches the statue and removes small, circular pieces from it in key areas: armpits, belly, legs. As the plates come off, you see bright yellow skin beneath the statue’s iron exterior. With a smile on his face, the clone begins tickling the newly exposed areas - each and every one of them with recourse to his tail, causing jovial laughter to echo from inside.
Alas, you should’ve known better that to assume anything in the crazy hyena’s castle served any purpose other than tickling.
Only then do you notice the gold nameplate near the statue’s feet. It reads: ‘Quetzal’.
Moving along, you see a green crocodile strapped to a table; wearing a gold chain, of all things. He laughs as clones tease him from head-to-toe with soft feathers. He is blindfolded and wearing a pair headphones as booming laughter flows freely and uninhibited from his toothy maw.
“Turns out hypnosis is really easy to achieve if you pair it with tickling. Wanna hear what’s playing on his cans? Go on, put your ear against them.”
You don’t feel like doing that, but the thought of how Nyarl might punish your disobedience leaves you little choice. Hesitantly, you lean intimately closer to the crocodile and put your ear against one side of his headphones.
“…Ticklish… …Good boy… …Coochie coo… …Vector…”
“Like it? I made it myself,” Nyarl proudly proclaims.
You can’t make out much, but you get the gist of it. Imagining what it must be like for the poor croc to have that twisted mantra drilled into him with supplementary stimulation for hours on end sends a shiver down your spine.
Moving on, you encounter another creature laughing maniacally as his pudgy blue feet are (somewhat literally) devoured by Nyarl clones. He wears a skull over his head… or is it actually part of his head? You can’t really tell; all you know is that the teeth and tongues of those hyenas must feel like hell on his soles.
“You have such delicious feet, Dragaur!” one clone remarks.
“Or maybe it’s the lemon-flavored oil we’ve spread on them,” the other added, punctuating his statement with a flurry of ticklish licks not unlike what you did to an ice-cream on a hot summer day. “Too bad it boosts your sensitivity tenfold.”
“Hahahaha! Plehehese!” The skullhead begs in hysterical laughter. There are buckets of water and horse brushes nearby… You can guess what they are for.
Further ahead, you see an ostentatious throne that sits a crocodilian king.
“Ah, that’s K. Rool. Used to be King K. Rool, but there are no kings in my castle other than me.”
Leather straps bind the fat crocodile to the throne by the wrists and ankles. Fluffy rollers spin under his arms, inner thighs, and the soles of his feet, not sparing the spaces between his scaly toes.
“HAHAHA! R-RELEASE ME AT OHONCE!”
“Deepest apologies, your highness,” a clone mocks, wearing a red cape and a gold crown - no doubt K. Rool’ s. “But you must understand that I simply enjoy hearing your cute laugh too much to let you go!”
‘Cute’ isn’t the word you would use to describe the crocodile’s laughter. It sounded the same way a trainwreck looked. Broken and chaotic.
“YOHOHOU DAMN FOOL! I’ILL HAHAVE YOU EHEHEXECUTED!”
For once, you think the recipient of the torture might deserve it. Just a little.
“Do you remember Viktor?” Nyarl asks as he walks over towards a man-sized metal cocoon. “I told you he brought a friend.” He presses a button on a control panel next to the cocoon and, magically, the front half of it becomes transparent, revealing what lies within.
Your eyes widen in horror.
Inside what you now understand is some sort of sensory deprivation tank lies a dragon unlike the ones you have seen before. His aquamarine scales look smooth rather than rough, and his jade fins are longer, more suited to swimming rather than flying - which seems to track as you can’t find wings anywhere.
He is heavily restrained. Any part of him that might be capable of movement is strapped, clamped, or otherwise pressed down on to render him fully unable to move. Earmuffs rob him of his hearing while a blindfold and a muzzle hug his tight facial features perfectly and render him blind and mute.
The tank tickles him.
It really, really tickles him.
His vulnerable body is swarmed with machinery. You spot miniature versions of just about every single one of the instruments you’ve seen thus far.
To begin, he is covered in oil. Laser beams shine upon his soft feet like the ones used to tickle Fox and Wolf. Small motorized brushes torture his toes and the webbings in between, reminding you of the mechanisms inside Mufasa’s tickle chair. Synthetic tongues lick his sides while large buffers polish the already impossibly shiny scales of his tummy, making you think of Spyro and Shere Khan. Fluffy rollers tease his inner thighs and you recall Ben Bigger and the roller he had at his feet. Feathers tease his exposed nose and ear fins in a manner not unlike what Jay and Sodara went through. Finally, the entire tank was lined with the same strange crystals that trapped Bubba, discharging load after load of ticklish lightning onto the poor dragon’s body.
You look away, horrified. Truly, you cannot imagine a worse fate for anyone that what that poor dragon is going through.
“Like Viktor, he is here entirely of his own free will.”
…What?
You can’t bring yourself to believe anyone would go and ask to be tortured to that extreme.
Nyarl seems to notice your very reasonable doubt. He laughs. “Don’t believe me? Here, let me show you.” He presses a button on the control panel and every single mechanism in the tank stops immediately. With a mechanical hiss, the tank opens, and Nyarl and removes the dragon’s muzzle and earmuffs.
“Hey there, Tagus. How are you feeling? Need a break?” he asks in the friendliest tone you’ve heard from him so far.
“W-What? Why? I… I can take it!” the dragon said between labored breaths.
You come to the conclusion that everyone in this place is insane.
“If you insist!” Nyarl quickly reapplied the gag and earmuffs, sealing the tank shut and resuming the dragon’s masochistic joyride. “See? What did I tell you? Total tickle slut!”
You don’t understand. What sort of mental disorder must someone have to take pleasure in such a thing?
“How about I show you my favorite room?”
You leave the dragon to his masochistic enjoyment and leave the Scaly Room.
“You see, after our victims have been… ‘persuaded’ to sign the contract, they are given the option of spicing things up.” You arrive at an unassuming door. No thematic ornament, no species indicator. Nothing. Just plain wood and a worn. “And when they sign… there is not turning back.”
As Nyarl opens the door, you are overwhelmed by a pure scent of sex. Like with all other rooms, there is a veritable menagerie of men being tickled. That does not surprise you. What catches you off-guard is the genital stimulation all of them are undergoing.
Surprisingly, you find some familiar faces. Mufasa. The lion lies bound on a table with canvas straps. Naked. Two clones wield what appear to be wands of some sort, tipped with large, diamond-shaped pieces of that dreadful tickle crystal. One of the clones masturbates the lion until his toes curled and his back started to arch, signaling an approaching climax, only to them completely let go and start pressing the wands against his naked body.
“HAHAHAHA! PLEHEHEASE!” Mufasa begs hysterically as the Nyarls press the crystals against his immobile torso and drag them along the soles of his feet. Arcs of ticklish electricity jump from its surface to shake the very nerves of his furred furry belly and between his wiggling toes, bringing him down from the verge of orgasm. After some time, they repeat the process.
While Mufasa isn’t allowed to cum, another familiar face is encouraged to do so. Russie the panda bear hovers above the floor, blindfolded and suspended in the same manner as he had been in the Bear Room. Only this time, in addition to the clone’s claws raking across his belly, armpits, and the soles of his feet - he must also contend with a vibrating sleeve around his erection which coerced orgasm after orgasm out of the bear. And as you know, each of those orgasms made his body exponentially more sensitive.
“MMMMMNNFF!!”
He screamed through the ball gag as another orgasm hit, barely resulting in a few droplets of semen to join the growing puddle on the floor.
“Russie liked being tickled so much that he became a little… excited,” Nyarl explained. “He kept begging to cum so it was easy to convince him to sign. Of course, now he probably wants to stop cumming.”
So, this is where they took him… does that mean he signed a contract and explicitly asked for this? You have trouble believing that but Nyarl seems to have been fairly honest with his words so far, for better or worse.
There is a large yellow reptile tied to a throne similar to the one K. Rool. sat on in the last room, with his enormous feet locked in stocks in front of him - soles slurped by a pair of what looked like cartoonishly big carnivorous plants.
“BWAHAHAHA! I DOHON’T WAHAHANT MY FEEHEET LIHIHICKED!”
“Should’ve thought of that before signing, Bowser,” a clone teased as he dragged the tip of a feather over bound man’s engorged glans. “Besides, you know you love it~ Why else would you have asked for it?”
The clone was right, as evidenced by Bowser’s intense blushing and the non-stop stream of pre-cum dribbling from the tip of his mast. He looked about ready to burst but the gentle caress of the feather seemed enough to keep him on edge, and, by consequence, extremely receptive to touch - not excluding the intense licking against his soles.
Right across from Bowser was a pair of dogs.
One was a burly Siberian Husky in a straightjacket… At least his tail looked like a husky’s to you. You couldn’t see his face behind the black and blue pup hood - fully enclosed safe for a few nose holes. He was not bound but rather pinned down as a clone sat on his legs and brushed his bare soles with grooming gloves. That alone would have been torture enough, but Nyarl saw fit to place a strange machine over the dog’s erection - a clear tube through which you could can see three moving rings. One for each section of the penis: the head, the middle, and the knot.
“Exile here wanted the full-on insane asylum experience. He can’t see, hear nor speak. Only laugh and cum until he’s completely coocoo!” Nyarl sounded almost proud of that. “Think the foot tickling is bad enough? Take a closer look at the straightjacket he’s in.”
You step closer to the wiggling canine and notice a lively mess of little pink tentacles wriggling from underneath the straightjacket.
“That’s right, baby. Every bit of him under that jacket is being tickled. Must be hell, huh?”
The tube over his red rocket turned white. If this was hell, the husky seemed to love it.
Next to Exile, another dog laughs. The tri-color border collie is strapped to what you can only describe as a cross between a recliner and a heavy-duty dentist chair, blindfolded with a green bandana and muzzled with a pair of socks stuffed into his maw. A clone tickles his bare torso with his claws while other brushes his red paw-pads.
“Meet Ardeo. He had a hand in creating this place, believe it or not. All he wanted as payment was to be driven completely out of his mind with tickles. I think I’ve upheld my end of the deal.”
You can see that. The dog does not even struggle. He has seemingly given himself up to the torture. The clone at his paws uncaps a bottle of oil and you decided to go elsewhere.
You spot a hugely muscular lion standing suspended with his arms and legs spread apart and tethered to posts. He worse a speedo that wasn’t large enough to contain his throbbing erection. Oil covered his body from head to toe, facilitating the work of the two mechanical buffers polishing the soles of his feet, the mechanical claws teasing his belly and of the clone stood behind him and teasingly wiggled his fingers against the lion’s armpits.
“Coochie coochie coo, Arsalan! With an ability like that, it’s like you’re begging to be tickled insane.”
You’re confused. Ability? What does Nyarl mean?
“Arsalan here can cover himself in oil,” he explains “Supposed to heal him in battle but… well, you know what I like to use oil for, by now, don’t you?”
There was one more feline in the room - a muscular tiger tied on all fours and surrounded by clones. They wielded paintbrushes and painted his sides, soles and genitals in a variety of garish colors. Various things are written all over him. ‘Tickle here’ next to an arrow pointing at his pits, ‘Tiger milk’ on his buttock with another arrow pointing down towards his balls, and, finally, ‘Ticklish Tony’ and ‘Grrrreat!’ on each of his soles. He laughed maniacally, unable to form words. It was clear that his mind was beyond saving.
And yet, he did not suffer the worst out of everyone in that room.
After observing the tiger, Nyarl leads you to what appears like a large rubber sculpture in the shape of a bear lying down on a table. Exactly three things are outside the rubber prison: The bear’s head, muzzled and blindfolded while also immobilized between two blocks of Styrofoam and a head strap. His feet which were tickled by mechanized rakes dragging their plastic prongs up and down the wide soles. And, finally, his cock which was trapped inside a milking machine and forced to surrender load after load.
“Remember Death? White wolf, makes your neck hairs stand on end? He shares a world with this guy - Papa Bear. Silly name, if you ask me. Should’ve been called Ticklish Bear instead,” Nyarl remarks. “There are tiny little brushes going over his whole body under that rubber, by the way. What, did you think I’d let that much ticklish real waste go to waste? Please.”
The door opens once again and in comes a clone, wheeling in a large, black cocoon like the one you’d seen Tagus in on the Scaly Room - only this one looked large enough to fit two people in its interior. Upon closer inspection, you realize that is exactly what it contains. Tagus on the left and Viktor on the right, both under heavy bondage, total sensory deprivation, and complete ticklish annihilation. Only this time there are brush-like appendages stimulating their erections while automatic strokers milk them for all they are worth.
They are holding hands. How dementedly adorable.
You leave the room just as Bubba the dragon is wheeled in, still trapped and laughing his head off in the tickle crystal, except there is another appendage sticking out of it…
You are overcome with shock, fear, and confusion. Mainly confusion. Why all this? What could possibly compel did the hyena go through so much effort just to tickle these people insane? Why did some people helped him do that? Why did some choose to be tickled to insanity?
Why?
“Let me tell you why.”
Your eyes dart up to meet Nyarlathotep’s intense gaze.
“Insanity, baby. I want them all to go crazy!”
You still do not understand. Or perhaps you don’t want to believe all of this was for such a horrifically simple purpose.
“These boys? Their every waking moment is filled with worries. Jobs, chores, relationships… Bla, bla, bla… They get something done and there are ten other things they need to worry about. You know who doesn’t need to worry about anything? Crazy people - those whose minds have left them. I’m going to do every one of these hot pieces of meat a favor and turn them into crazy tickle toys!”
Your heart is in your throat. Nyarl is insane, that much is clear. You ponder running away, but where would you go? Not to mention the thousand identical clones of the hyena who are running around. You try to calm down. Like it or not, escape isn’t an option.
“Wanna know why I settled on tickling to drive people crazy?” the hyena continued. “Funny story, actually. I sent a clone to scout a certain world and got outsmarted by a certain wolf. Want to guess what the wolf did to my clone?”
He took out his phone and pulled up a live camera feed.
A Nyarl clone is tied spread-eagle on a table in the middle of a small room, naked, gagged and blindfolded. Mechanized scrubbers tickle him from head to toe while a gray wolf holds the head of an electric toothbrush against his balls while circling his glans with a feather.
“He tickled my clone for days on end, driving him insane. I understood then that tickling was the perfect method. Simple. Clean. Childish, even. As a reward, I gave him that clone, as well as a permanent place in my castle. He can come and go as he likes. Now, there is one more room I want to show you.”
You feel lightheaded. More? You’re not sure you can stomach more of this. Thoughts of eternal tickle torment swirl through your head as Nyarl leads you down the dizzying spiral staircase. At the very bottom, lies a door. You traverse it to find the most terrifying sight you’ve been met with so far.
A room, much larger and taller than the all the other where stack upon stack of the same pods Tagus (and later Viktor) was in.
“I like to call this my storage room. Don’t worry, everyone is safe… Their bodies are, at least. They don’t age, and don’t need any sustenance here in my real. That goes for you too, in case you’re wondering,” Nyarl explain. “I keep the stubborn ones here. Give them time to think about signing their lives over to me.”
There are some pods in the middle of the room. You check their nameplates. ‘Volibear’, ‘Horkeu Kamui’, ‘Lin Hu’, ‘Dragaux’. You dare to peek inside and take a look at the tortured men within. What you find doesn’t surprise you, but it terrifies you all the same. Tight bondage, innumerable mechanized tickle tools, sexual overstimulation galore.
You fall back and tremble with fear. Everywhere you look is a pod with a man inside being tickled out of his mind. Nyarl does what your trembling legs cannot and pulls you up. He laughs as maniacally as his tickled victims.
“Do you know what the best part is? Everyone you’ve seen today are only my latest victims. This castle is big. Bigger than your feeble mind can comprehend. We haven’t even scratched the surface, my dear latest capture.”
There is an empty pod. It has your name on it.