Chapter 12: Treacherous Footing

I spent that whole night reading ahead for my courses. I wanted to do well, and my sister had made a good point. It was an excellent way to forget all the personal shit that was going around me. My girlfriend was pissed, master--the stranger--was destroying what was left of my sense of self, I seemed to be slowly falling out with Ron, and there was little I could do about any of it, so I just learned mathematics. Getting my head out of that space and into the purity and beauty of rigour was quite a help. As a distraction, it was more useful than most.

Surprisingly, things seemed to get easier from then on. Though I had to write my humiliating daily reports to master, he didn't interfere in my life for weeks, beyond occasionally forbidding me to masturbate. Even that became less important as I felt it was too embarrassing to ask and managed to learn to mostly do without, although at the expense of some rather vivid dreams including public exposure of my perversion, being trampled and used both by master, whom I dreamt of wearing a sinister mask, and Clara.

After our last phone call, I didn't have it in me to contact her again. A few weeks later I noticed the books I left at her placed had been returned to the library, and I thought that would be the last I'd know of her, sadly. It seemed that I had disappointed her beyond repair, and, somehow, I wasn't ready to apologise for what she thought was my bad judgement. It was bad enough to have to crawl for a single person, for me to add another one.

I missed Clara, though. We had not been involved for long, but somehow, it felt right when we were. We seemed to fit each other and I hadn't met anyone since that I found interesting enough to pursue, not that my chances on that were any good. Although the stranger had become a lot less of a pressence in my life, the whole situation had not so subtly undermined my confidence. Knowing myself to be so weak and helpless before him had made me much more hesitant and timid than I already was to begin with.

The truth was I also missed master. As he started ignoring me, I began to feel more confused about it all, to the point of hoping for some of his little gifts. I longed to come to my room and see his crusty, dirty socks lying on my pillow, or to get a note demanding more extreme demonstrations of compliance and degradation from me. The pain wasn't something I missed, but it also became part of my dreams and fantasies: trading the joy of bathing master's grimey feet with my tongue for a number of strikes of punishment.

I tried to keep most of this to myself, but my letters to master, which had begun as an unwelcome obligation, slowly transformed into genuine confessions of awe and devotion. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than breaking free from these disgusting impulses, but I couldn't deny they existed anymore. I was growing so desperate that I sometimes pondered begging master to use me, to beat me, to do something more than read my letters and keep watch.

It was a Sunday morning, and I had been working late, so I overslept until Ron woke me up. It was 13:00 when he knocked on the door. I was so deeply asleep I didn't notice what was going on, but my dream, which involved running away through a complicated labyrinth, incorporated the sound in the form of loud gong strokes which made the floor and walls shake in sympathy. I ran faster and faster, until I suddenly felt I was falling and crashed onto my bed. That's when I woke up and realised Ron was knocking hard, and calling my name.

I got up, unlock the door, and quickly went back to bed. He was welcome to enter, but I was too sleepy to get ready for the day.

He came in, locked the door, and smiled.

"Good morning. Aren't you getting up?"

"Too tired. Let me sleep, man."

"It's late. Come and have lunch with me."

"Fuck that", I said, rolling further into the bedclothes and covering up my head.

"You can be so annoying sometimes", he said. "Come on, you're going to end up sleeping through half of the weekend." Seeing I wasn't about to react, he sighed, and sat at the foot of my bed. "What's up, man? You can't sleep through the days like that." He sounded quite worried, actually.

I found Ron's insistence annoying, but I had let him in after all. Perhaps I wanted him to insist. Maybe I felt like being fussed about a little. Still, I had no plans whatsoever to get up yet, so I made some noises and curled myself up further. If he kept it up for much longer, I'd lose the chance to sleep. Maybe it was too late already, after having been woken up.

"Is everything ok? It's not like you to sleep so late. If anything I'd expect you to be the one waking me up", he said. "Are you having trouble with class or something? We've hardly talked lately. This may sound a bit ... you know ... a bit precious", he said, mumbling the last word, "but I'm beginning to worry about you."

"Oh for fuck's sake", I said, hiding I was touched in spite of myself. "It's just I want to sleep over today. I was studying pretty late last night, lost track of time, and now you're here keeping me awake."

"So then, everything is fine, right?" he asked. I mumbled a yes. "Nothing's up with you?" I muttered. "All is well, then, no problems?" I growled. "Then you won't mind if I do this", he said, and his voice conveyed a mischievous smile. I had no time to react, as Ron grabbed my bedclothes and pulled hard, leaving me lying uncovered on the bed.

"Fuck you", I said. "You're such a brat sometimes, you know? How we still hang around is beyond me." I was pissed off, though not quite as much as I pretended to be. It felt pretty cold without the bedding, and it seemed inevitable I'd have to get up. Ron had won, once more. What a surprise.

"Oh, man, you look so angry. Why so serious all of a sudden? Where's my light-hearted, fun-loving friend with a great sense of humour?" he asked, grinning. "But don't worry, Dave. I have the solution for this!" He kept looking at me, with mischief on his face, and I knew I wasn't going to like whatever was coming. He just waited there, sitting by my feet, which were getting colder by the moment, keeping eye contact, as the tension built up.

A few seconds of silence, and I couldn't contain my nerves. I knew that if I somehow kept calm, I would at least delay whatever he had in mind, but at some point I wanted it to be over already. "Ok, what you talking about then?" I asked.

"Ah, but that would be telling! I just got this great idea to cheer you up. You know, you look so grumpy now, so dour. It's a friend's job to help with such things. You know how it is: you look sullen, you act sullen, you start feeling sullen. What you need is", he said, making a long pause, "some laughter!" Just as he said it, he grabbed my bare feet and began to tickle my soles. I hadn't seen it coming at all, expecting him to maybe throw some cold water at me, and was caught by surprise, helpless. I began to laugh, out of control, and to my shame, to beg him to please stop. He knew I was very ticklish, and he had in the past enjoyed some protracted Dave-tickling sessions, but I didn't think he would do something so childish at that stage. On top of it all, I hadn't gone to the toilet, and it became harder and harder to keep myself together. For some reason, I was even getting an erection, which I hoped Ron wouldn't notice.

"Please", I said, breathless amidst the laughter, "please please please please, stop, I can't take it! Please! You know I'm too ticklish!"

"You see?" he said laughing himself, struggling to keep hold of my feet. "You're in a much better mood already. Laughing, having fun, enjoying life, even doing some exercise. Really, I think you're really ungrateful, don't you agree?"

So he was playing his usual games, I thought. Before coming to university, he had done things of the sort sometimes. He wouldn't stop tickling me unless I did and said exactly what he wanted me to. Once he made me do a long division in my head and wouldn't stop until I got it right. We were kids, though, and this seemed too undignified for uni students, though I guessed more so for me than for him. He looked like he was having a great deal of fun, and I, as usual, was becoming completely exhausted from it all. Soon I wouldn't even be able to thrash around much, not that it did me any good.

"Yes, I was really ungrateful", I managed to say. His fingertips slowed down, and I got a few breaths, though I was still being tickled. Just not quite as intensely. "Thanks for slowing down", I said, knowing that I'd have to play his game in the end, and hoping to get out of it the soonest and with the minimum amount of embarrassment. Resisting only made him keep it up for longer, and he never seemed to get bored of it.

"Very good. Being polite is very important, you know. Especially when you're ticklish and entirely at someone else's mercy, wouldn't you agree? Of course you would. Hmm ... let me think ... what can I get you to do? I'm getting hungry so I'm not up for a long game today. Just count backwards from one hundred, aloud, without skipping any number, and we're even."

"Thank you", I said, keeping my own thoughts to myself. Even? What an arsehole. And yet I rather liked him, and it was all harmless fun, wasn't it? It's not like he was actually hurting me, and he'd made sure nothing was seriously wrong with me before he began. Why was I always making excuses for him, though? I started counting, which took me a very long time, especially since just as I began he went back to all-out speed. I knew he kept his word, though, so I was surprised when he kept tickling after I said 'one'. I wanted to ask him why, but I was afraid that would interrupt the count, so I tried to think for a few seconds of further torture, almost pissing myself, when I realised there's a zero. As soon as I said it, he let go of my feet and began to laugh himself.