Horror House

Back at the house, Aidan continues his search for Bruce.

“Bruce?” Aidan calls as he climbs up the stairs, “You up there, bro?”

Each step groans as Aidan’s weight presses into them, eerily echoing through dead silence in the once rowdy house. A figure catches his eyes, standing perfectly still in one of the bedrooms.

“Bruce, bro, not cool.” Aidan says with a comforted sigh of relief, clasping the shoulder of his good friend.

The hooded figure’s shoulder collapses with Aidan’s touch, as if there were nothing inside the clothes. As it turns to Aidan, his face struggles to express the shock and horror bouncing around his panic-stricken brain. There is nothing there. The clothes hang atop a figure of complete nonexistence, an abyss that looked like true nothing. There was no black, no hole, but a simple incomprehensible nothingness.

Aidan’s fight or flight kicks in, wailing away meaninglessly as the void stands still, every punch disappearing into and returning from its nothing again and again. As Aidan tries to swing again, numerous pale human arms adorned with countless sutures rip out of the void, shooting forward to grab Aidan’s limbs and cover his mouth.

The chiseled man’s screams die by its hand as the void pins Aidan onto the bed, one arm for each limb. Aidan struggles frantically, but the arms’ iron grip around his wrists and ankles leave the man flailing his torso and hips. Those too, become pinned down as the void has a seemingly endless arsenal of arms hidden away in its nonbeing. Aidan continues his futile struggle, but can move no more than mere inches. Two hands gently curl out of the void’s center, slowly unbuttoning the athlete’s shirt before descending upon Aidan’s shredded midsection with an abnormal elegance, petting along his tightened abs.

“Mmm!” Aidan says into the hand clasped over his mouth with rising confusion and fear.

Without warning, the gentle, petting fingers jab into his sides, digging at his skin.

“MMM! MMM!” Aidan bursts into muffled laughter as he thrashes, trying to slink away from the tickling hands.

His abs unconsciously contract and relax in fleeting rebellion to the hands’ eccentric rhythm, always striking moments before Aidan expects them to. As his defined midsection dances with the void’s hands, an additional pair of hands descend, a fair bit higher than the ones already working on him.

NO! Aidan cries into the hand, his head distressfully shaking as the hands nestle into the space between his arms and his torso. His weak spot.

The sensation immediately sends Aidan into a delirious struggle. He squirms with desperate objection, threatening to pop his shoulders out of their sockets as the wriggling fingers toy with his forcibly exposed pits. His unbuttoned shirt soaks in the sweat coming from his knotted back as he thinks of nothing but escaping the devilish hands. It’s torture. Every time Aidan feels adjusted to the onslaught of tickling, only a hand or two will pull back for half a moment to gently caress the spots they were abusing. The soft touches ignite Aidan’s skin with electric shocks, as his body cannot know when the hands will switch back from light petting to the grueling tickling.

As the minutes pass like hours, the laughing athlete shrieks and squeals at his captor’s hand, every muscle on his torso twitching uncontrollably. His form spasms under the void’s complete control. After what felt like eons, Aidan reaches sanctuary. Only muted half chuckles victoriously escape his mouth when the fingers dug into his skin, finally having grown desensitized to the tickle torture. Aidan trembles with relief at the sight of the hands pulling back into the void. But, to Aidan’s horror, they return, and the stitches that run along the void’s arms slowly undo themselves, peeling back skin to reveal innumerable gashes, all of which pour out a heavy, viscous oil. His body shudders as the void rubs warm honey into his skin. Aidan groans as the liquid soaks into his previously untouched parts, a bit too preoccupied to realize all of his clothes save his sweat-stained shirt had been removed. Copious amounts of the oil seeps into his built legs as the void pays special attention to his large feet; he already needs to fight back chuckles as the void lathers his bare soles with gentle strokes from its fingers. As the mysterious, buttery liquid soaks into him, Aidan can’t help but notice how vivid everything feels, and even looks. It’s like the world had been turned up to 11, almost excruciatingly bombarding Aidan’s confused brain with every sense. Everything is too much. The dark room is too colorful, his shirt is too rough, too wet, the void’s hands are too hot, and the silence is too loud. Slick with the foreign substance, the void cracks its many knuckles, preparing to dive right back in.

“No, no, bro, please, please, please!” Aidan begs for his life as the hand lifts from his mouth and covers his eyes.

With his eyes covered, his only line of defense is breached. Although he couldn’t expect the tempo and intensity of the tickling before, at least he could see which spots would need to brace themselves. As his solace is stolen, Aidan flexes his entire frame, defined muscles contracting to their limit in his last desperate defense. Though the void has no voice, Aidan can almost feel it giggling as his strength dwindles. Not being able to flex any longer, a single crack appears in Aidan’s muscle armor, and all hell breaks loose. What must be dozens, no, hundreds of hands and fingers wriggle and dance excitedly all over his shredded physique. They’re everywhere. Fingers graze past the sensitive parts of his neck, others run over his size 14 feet and between his toes, more and more fingers snake their way under his balls, onto his abs, into his belly button, in his pits, over his obliques. Anywhere that Aidan finds even remotely ticklish, the void teases with millions of eager fingers.

Aidan screams with laughter, each sound escaping before the last gets the chance to finish, leaving the room a cacophony of laughs, only cut by desperate cries for help from the defenseless hunk.

“STOP, stop HAHAHA stop stop, ST-HAHAHAHAHA- STOP!” Aidan bawls, thrashing in his prison of infinite tickling hands. 

His feet flutter like he is swimming, but no orientation can possibly escape the devastating torture as dozens of hands pull his feet back taut, forcing every inch of his feet to continually experience their personalized torment. His body is a battleground of urgent gasps of oxygen fighting their way down to his lungs as the symphony of laughter blasts out of him. It feels like he’s seizing as every muscle and tendon flexes, uncontrollably tremoring and squirming at the thing’s limitless tickling.

“PLEASEEEEE.” Aidan barely manages to wheeze out, only serving to make the void more aggressive.

Aidan throws his head back in hopeless, horrible laughter. It feels like he’d been set on fire as rivers of searing sweat cascade through his muscularity. It’s okay, I’m gonna pass out, Aidan thinks to himself, not having the time to say it as laughter continues to be unwillingly ripped from his sweating, twitching, and heaving frame. He prays for unconsciousness to take him faster as his muscles scream in duress. The prayer falls on deaf ears, as Aidan only feels his consciousness hone in, dialing back to 11 every time it wavers even slightly. Aidan had always been fairly ticklish, but with the oil slicking his skin and soaking into his brain, his skin screams to the touch.

“HAHAHAHAHAHA! STOP!” Aidan screams with a strained, hoarse voice from under the blanket of tickling hands.

Though Aidan can’t see, he swears his heart is literally beating out of his chest. As the void continues indulging its sadism, Aidan’s entire body is coerced into flexing beyond their limit, tendons threaten to snap as Aidan convulses. With sweat literally steaming off his bodily inferno, and skin about four shades redder than normal, Aidan hysterically squirms, grabbing past pools of sweat to feel the soaked sheets and mattress. His hands beg for something, anything, that isn’t the mind shattering tickling. Before he can find real relief, the void pins his hands upright, tickling even his palms. Feral laugh-screams tear out of his lungs as all the water in his body pours out of him as sweat and tears. His once white shirt clung to his skin drenched see through by writhing man’s bodily fluids. It looked as if the man and the mattress had been caught out in a monsoon.

“HaHAHAHAHA” Aidan cries out, tears soaking into the void’s hands over his eyes. 

Even after decades of constant hellish training for every sport and physical activity under the sun, his abs burn like they had never before, infinitely worsened by his knowing that there would never be relief. Laughs turn to sobs then back to laughs as the void toys with Aidan’s mind and body, holding his sanity hostage at its literal fingertips. An eternity passes, and Aidan forgets why he was there, how it had happened, where he even was. All he knew was the relentless torture, believing it would never stop until he was dead, perhaps even past that. 

Just as he feels his heart about to wave the flag, the sensations vanish. An abrupt relief crackles through his exhausted body, muscles still twitching like they were being tickled. With returned vision, Aidan looks down at his toned frame, marinating on the sweat submerged mattress. What little body fat the athlete had previously is completely missing, burned out of him from the physical exertion. His heart thumps proudly beyond his chest, as if he had just run several marathons back to back. If Aidan were not a collegiate athlete in his prime physical form, there is no doubt in his mind that the experience would’ve killed him. Looking further down, he can’t help but notice his cock flagpoling into the air, dripping a thin line of semen. 

In the brief moments Aidan has before his consciousness fades, his vision catches the void standing in the corner, biding its time. Aidan knows what the future holds, and he prays for death. 

Everything goes black.