Four wooden boxes shook in place in the large, empty barn. Angry jerks back and forth and yells of frustration were mostly muffled by the thick, padded traps but the men inside the boxes of course didn’t know that, leaving them with the false hope of attracting a friendly face or even a good Samaritan to help them out of the situation they’d found themselves in. “What the fuck is this shit?!” Mike Montgomery, the fiery 18 year old of the foursome, raged with his bulging biceps straining against his containment. “Mike? That you??” Ezra Fitz questioned upon recognizing the voice through the PVC pipe connected all four boxes once they both stopped shouting.

“Ezra??” “Yeah, it’s me…where the hell are we, man?” the English teacher asked, trying to lean on his brains more than his brawn to escape as he assessed his surroundings. “Ezra? Damn, well at least I’m not here by myself” Caleb Rivers added as he too recognized his neighbor, just as pissed off about his position but now trying to be calm and think clearly. “Caleb? Who all is here? Or better yet, why are we here??” the 27 year old academic questioned. “I’m here too, guys…wherever here is. I don’t hear any cars…just nature…we must be outside of Rosewood” Toby Cavanaugh chimed in from the box at the other end, on the other side of Caleb.

“Somebody must’ve snatched us! You guys better not have gotten me into some kind of kinky game or something…I’ve got a workout in the morning with the guys” Mike pointed out with another forceful fight in his box and maybe if they would’ve been normal wooden boxes, he would’ve been able to bust his way out. But they weren’t. They were shaped like classic coffins and completely padded on the inside with holes at the top and bottom that locked their wrists and ankles in place and kept them stretched out on their backs. Sturdy straps across their knees, waist, and inner elbows prevented any extended movement and the only thing they could see was the roof of the barn through the handful of air holes that’d been cut into the tops of the boxes. The coffin traps themselves had even been bolted to the tables they sat on about five feet off the ground, leaving each of the Rosewood locals sitting ducks for whoever had put them there.

“Why do I have a feeling this has something to do with A?” Caleb asked, the cleverest 20 year old Rosewood had to offer, not that he had to be to figure this was connected to the plague of mysteries they and the girls had been dealing with for years. “They even took my uniform! Why leave me in just my boxers?” Toby asked, more inquisitive since joining the police force. “I’m in the same boat…” Caleb answered, looking down at his black boxer briefs. “Alright, pervert asshole! Let me out of this so I can kick your ass! Stop being a little pussy!” Mike challenged, he too in only his underwear, a pair of red Hanes briefs that clung to his strong thighs. “I don’t know if I’d provoke them, Mike” Ezra added, almost not realizing he was only in his short navy briefs until Toby pointed it out.

“Whatever is going on, we’ll figure a way out…there’s four of us. That’s four brains working together so let’s just think for a seco-” Ezra stopped short, his words derailing off the track of his attempt to guide them toward a solution. “What’s wrong?” Caleb asked. “My shoe…somebody took my left shoe!” Ezra answered with panic on his handsome face as the barn air greeted his sheer-socked foot. “What the hell?” Mike asked just before the same hands grabbed the heel of the other shoe and ripped it off too, leaving Ezra’s size 10s to wiggle and flex with anticipation outside the end of the coffin.

“Dude, what’s happening??” Mike asked but the usually cool and collected literary enthusiast didn’t respond, like he couldn’t get the words out for worrying about why his feet were being stripped or why he’d been left with his shoes on at all. “Ezra, come on, what’s up?” Caleb prodded before the ambiguous silence from the box over was broken with a giggly gasp of surprise. “Ezra??” Toby shouted to make sure he could hear him down the line. “AhaNO!” was all they heard through the connecting pipe, piquing their collective interest even more. “Ezra, talk to us!” Caleb shouted. “I ohOAAh cAhAnNT!” Ezra answered the best he could, leaving the others even more confused. “Why are you…laughing??” Caleb asked with a freaked-out look on his face. “AhAsSTToHOP! GEheETT oOOohFF!” echoed through the PVC pipe as Ezra’s box shook in place and his neighbors’ imaginations ran wild with possibilities.

The 21 year old cop yanked on the wrist holes keeping his arms above his head as if he could get free and do something about their predicament but a tug on his right boot was enough to distract his efforts. “Hey! Leave my shoes on! I’m fucking serious!! Those are Rosewood Police Department property!” Toby tried to intimidate while curling his toes in his boot but couldn’t save it, giving him a dose of the same anxiety Ezra had felt moments earlier. Toby’s white tube socked-foot tried to block his other boot, to get in the way of it being stolen too but couldn’t before the same hands suddenly returned. “WoOaH! AohAWhhaATthEE FFuHUcCK!? GGEettoOoFMmME!!” traveled down the pipe until Caleb could hear Ezra and Toby laughing and protesting on either side of him.

“What the hell is happening?? Toby? Ezra?? I’m in the dark here, guys!” Caleb pointed out in hopes of earning an answer to his growing confusion but his friends were too busy fighting the fingers scribbling on their feet to clear anything up. “NNooAohA! SSTtOOpPTTiIiCCkKLiiNnGGmMMEE!!” Ezra shouted and Caleb and Mike went cold in their boxes on either side of him. “T…tickling? Are you serious right now?? No way, fuck that man!” Mike refused with preemptive rejection as he began writhing against his bondage as hard as he could, taunted by Ezra and Toby’s forced laughter through the pipe. “This is weird even for A” Caleb admitted with a more contained panic than Mike as he surveyed the makeup of his box, hoping to find some way out that he just hadn’t seen yet, too busy searching for an escape route to realize when Toby stopped laughing.

The wizkid’s nervous eyes lit up with the feeling of his sneaker leaving his foot, redirecting his energy to try and hold onto it. “Fuck off, man!” Caleb barked but his feet were too far apart to actually try and protect the other, a detail he couldn’t help but think must’ve been by design. His second Van was off within seconds and the same eager hands that’d made Toby realize how ticklish he was quickly got acquainted with Caleb’s 11s, with only the shield of two thin black no-show socks to protect them. “A’s into feet now, huh? That it?” Caleb attempted to undermine until his high arches met the eager fingers. “AAhAhAhSSHHIITT!!” rang out through the PVC pipe and Caleb fell into a bucking fit within the coffin walls, no match for the harsh scratches down the middles of both helpless feet.

Mike’s box tested the strength of the hardware keeping it attached to the table the more he fought to break out, giving his captivity the biggest run for its money until his left Nike was suddenly slipping off his foot. “No! Get the fuck off my feet! I’m serious, man! I’ll whip your ass when I get out of this!!” Mike warned as scarily as he could but the second shoe being ripped off only rattled him more, watering down the power in his voice with fear he hated to acknowledge even just to himself. His 10 ½s scrunched and kicked around the best they could in the white athletic socks but a quick claw down the right foot got a yelp of a laugh from within the coffin before a second swipe across the bottom of his arch and heel earned another outburst.

“This isn’t funny, asshole!! You’re dead meeAhT!” Mike tried to threaten but a scratch along the right balls made his voice crack with laughter, leaving his face red and his temper at a boil before the hands toying with him really got to work. “AAGGhAhAFFuUCCK!” Mike couldn’t help but let out like it pained him to give in but his feet were too sensitive to pretend they weren’t. He knew he’d sooner bite a hole through his lip than keep from laughing even if his ego preferred the former option. While the sound of Caleb and now Mike howling into their coffins filled his own, Ezra deduced that there must only be two people tickling them, giving him the green light to try and escape again while they were occupied.

His hands became fists on the other side of the top of the box and his feet clenched with his legs trying to kick free of their straps but despite looking a bit like Clark Kent, he wasn’t strong enough to make any headway, only earning him the attention of one of the men in the barn. Like the quick strike of a match, his right sock was snagged in one swoop, leaving Ezra only a moment to realize his foot was now not only locked in place, not only out of his reach, not only without a shoe, but now fully exposed. The cringe-inducing realization was only interrupted by a reinforcement of how justified his fear was as five vicious fingers suddenly dedicated themselves to his creamy bare foot.

“AAhAhNOOAohANNOoAohAOHAAH!!! SSTTOHOHOPP!!” Ezra erupted with wide-eyed hysteria inside his box like an alarm going off as the short, somewhat jagged nails clawed along his bubblegum-pink sole. Toby couldn’t help but be shaken by Ezra’s explosive reaction, unnerved by the sound of the Rosewood High teacher laughing his ass off and knowing exactly what was driving him so crazy. Caleb quickly figured Ezra’s sudden uproar must’ve been why his right foot was the only one still getting any attention; the tickler had divided his efforts. The crafty ex-bad boy could handle one foot getting tickled a whole lot better than both, especially one instead of two with a sock still on. He looked almost confident inside the coffin, like he could think of a way out and endure the reduced tickling even if it meant Ezra was suffering half-barefoot beside him but all it took was one finger slipping underneath the elastic edge of his left sock to ruin Caleb’s new plan.

“Shit - NO!” fired out of Caleb’s smart-mouth like a reflexive argument before the dirty sock landed on the floor of the barn and his silky sole was ravaged by the same dastardly hand. “FFUUCK! AohohohANNoAohAOHA!!” Caleb crumbled with a wide, puppeteered smile as his lush toes curled and his bare foot kicked around but never got away from the sinister fingers wreaking havoc up and down his tan foot. While one of the anonymous men tickled Ezra and Caleb, the second hadn’t drifted from Mike since starting with him, subjecting him and his jock feet to tireless scribbles through the ripe socks.

“GGEEETToOOFFFOoFFmMMEE!! NNOOoWWWAoAOA!!” Mike tried his best to demand but his laughter was too constant, too humbling to make his threats carry much of a punch. When he finally did get a break, the Rosewood senior looked like he did when he got off the treadmill but this time, his relief was very short-lived. Only seconds after backing off his feet, the same devious hands grabbed two handfuls of Mike’s socks, gripping them by the bits of loose fabric at the toes and pulling on them. “Dude! Leave my fucking socks on! Enough, man!! Come on!!” Mike argued with more violent jerks and twists in the coffin as the last line of defense slowly slipped off his feet, losing their grip on his ankles and then his heels by the second with anticipation eating away at Mike until the cotton coverage was completely confiscated and his meaty bare feet were severely more vulnerable.

“Goddammit! The hell is your problem?! You can’t just kidnap people and tickle them!” Mike shouted with a naïve sense of what could and couldn’t happen, especially in Rosewood. But his newfound uneasiness was only worsened by the feeling of being unable to move his right foot and something tightening around his big toe. “Hey! What is that? What is that??” Mike demanded to know before his other foot was treated the same way. Of course he was unable to see the toe ties now looped around his chunky big toes but he was certainly able to feel how restricted his feet were, how he could do little more than curl his smaller toes and barely wrinkle his soles. “Get that shit off my feet! I’m serious, man!” Mike shouted again, his macho sensibilities growing more threatened the more Caleb and Ezra’s increasingly delirious laughter spilled into his box and the more intense his helplessness became.

“Come on! Just let me gooAohAohAOHAAASHIT!” barreled out of Mike like a fuse igniting once all ten fingers started curling down his upright soles, not realizing until that devastating moment just how much his socks had been cushioning the tickling. Both hands merely scratching up and down his meaty feet was enough to get Mike bouncing around as much as he could in the box and laughing from his tight belly with howls of unmistakable ticklish suffering. Toby had begun to wonder if he would be spared the rest of the night, perhaps the ticklers having decided Caleb, Ezra, and Mike were enough. But to his dismay, the deputy soon felt another rush of panic when he felt his socks suddenly being tugged away.

“Hey! I’m telling you right now, I have the authority to arrest you for this! I already have you on kidnapping and you’re just adding to the list buddy…you hear me?” Toby tried to warn, thinking maybe the power of the law would be enough to scare their captors into retreating but his socks never stopped peeling off his feet, not until they revealed his plump, shrimpy pink toes. Toby’s 11s spent most of their time in police boots or work boots these days and it showed as his supple soles waited outside the bottom of the coffin, almost delicate looking right out of the thick socks but they didn’t just look delicate. “OoohAhAohAohaOHFFuUCCkkAohANNoOO!! NNOOAOhAALLRRiIiGGhHTTAAHAH!!! SSTToHOOPP!!” Toby cracked worse than Caleb had expected, surprised by how wild the laughter was coming through the tube.

The man’s nails grazed across his soles like forks combing down sticks of soft butter, effortlessly destroying Toby even with his feet failing around as much as they could. Fortunately for Officer Cavanaugh, after only a few minutes, his somewhat delayed barefoot tickling aligned with the mystery men’s plan for the evening. Like farmers picking fruit off a tree, one of the men swiped Ezra and Caleb’s remaining socks with quick yanks and forced their feet into the toe ties until they matched Mike’s. Toby received the same treatment but even just handling his bare feet was enough to keep him laughing, prolonging his torture until they were all on the same playing field.

“Who the hell is doing this??” Caleb asked with obvious urgency in his voice now that both of his feet were totally bare and very much tied back. “I don’t know, alright? I’m just as in the middle of this as you are” Ezra fired back, just as nervous about his increased exposure. “Let me outta this thing!!” Mike raged like he’d spit fire if somebody touched his feet again but what he felt next was different. “OooOHEY! The fuck are you doing?!” Mike shouted after they’d earned a ticklish jolt out of him. “WoAAh WwAhAT?!” Ezra tried to make sense of as he received the same treatment, both men unsure what was happening to their feet as two wide paint brushes ran up each of their soles, leaving them with only the feeling of something wet, like they’d stepped in paint. “What’s going on, guys??” Caleb asked. “I think they’re putting something on our feet…something wet” Ezra answered, puzzling Toby and Caleb before they were welcomed by the same drenched brushes suddenly lathering their delicious feet in the mystery goo.

“Guys, I think I know what they’re doing…” an uneasy Ezra announced as his mind came to a startling conclusion and his beautiful feet sat so ready to be victimized again, dripping with whatever they’d been coated with. “How do you know??” Mike asked with his usual attitude. “Have you ever seen those cartoons or old western comedies where a guy’s feet gets coated with honey or something like that and a cow or maybe a goat licks it off?” Ezra questioned. “...yeah” Caleb answered. “Well, we are in a barn…” Ezra pointed out, inspiring a new tingle of dread in each of them at the realization. “What?! A fucking cow’s gonna lick my feet??” Mike exclaimed with disgust. “No way…this is fucking crazy!” Toby shouted, terrified at the idea of any kind of animal having a go at his unreasonably soft feet.

An ‘eat up, boys!’ called out from inside the barn and made all of their toes curl against the ties with unique dread. “No! NO! Let us go!!” Caleb shouted as he imagined four cows being herded in to snack on their tasty feet, each of the Rosewood men fighting to escape their boxes and avoid what they knew was coming but Mike’s boyish, angry laughter firing down the pvc pipe first told the rest of them they were indeed fucked. “AAhAhANNOOAOH!” Ezra exploded next, his warm eyes wide with disbelief as the greedy tongues started slurping along his dreamy soles. The hair on Caleb’s arms stood up at the sound of the tortured laughter, convincing him to pull on his legs some more just in case he might be able to pull part of he box loose or slip a foot through one of the holes but the first tongue slipping between his big and second right toe hit him like a livewire. “AAhAh!” “ooAohAFUCK!” “NnOAOH!! FFuUUCCkOooFF!!” was all Caleb could think to say as a second tongue went after his other foot and got to work lapping up whatever had been painted on his juicy sole.

Toby only had a few more seconds, haunted by the sounds of the other guys already losing their minds until two mouths landed on his feet just the same, with one starting at his heel and the other going after his short toes in search of the hidden goodness that’d gotten between them. “oOoHaohOAHAOhAoHOohMMYyYGGOOOADDAOHA!!!” Toby’s coffin vibrated with his loud laughter as did the rest of them, the padded wooden walls barely able to contain their desperate reactions to the farm tongues licking, slurping, and even nibbling on their captive feet. However, it wasn’t farm tongues going to town on them; it was eight men. While the taste of a salt mixture on their soles and toes would’ve been enough to make cows and goats go wild for the guys’ feet, the chocolate syrup that’d actually been painted on their soles was merely a bonus for the group of foot-loving townies that’d been invited to the barn.

The only one of them who ever got a hint that it might not actually be animals licking his feet was Caleb, thrown off by the man’s beard on his right foot in a horrifying realization but with all four of them laughing so much, none of the others could even understand his attempts at letting them know through the pipe. The men on Mike’s feet had both decided to devour his bubbly toes, nibbling on the ends and slinking their tongues between each of them until the tough guy was shrieking into the coffin with ticklish hysteria but things only got worse for him when something suddenly shot into his armpits from below. “AAhAHaWWhAATTHhEEFFuUUUCCK!?” Mike tried to make sense of it as he looked around to see the hands that’d snuck through hidden holes in the bottom of the box, expertly placed for excellent access to his beefy pits.

Two other hands crept into Caleb’s box, latching around his sides and squeezing along his slim frame, scaring him as much as it ramped up his laughter until he too was roaring like a loud train. Ezra was too caught up in the tongue snaking along the balls of his left foot and the mouth nibbling on the edge of the other one to notice Caleb and Mike suddenly going even wilder on either side of him, not until a few minutes later when Mike’s armpits were vacated and his own were filled by the same intruding hands. “AAAhaHaWWhhAAHHATT?!?” Ezra’s voice broke with ticklish shock as the same mean fingers that’d dug into Mike’s hairy armpits started dancing around in his, opting for a different approach for Mr. Fitz and it worked.

Toby finally managed to get a hand free, possibly helped by the sweat he’d built up from laughing so much but Caleb’s relief quickly turned into Toby’s new nightmare as two hands reached through the holes of his coffin and sank into his pale abs like zombies looking for flesh. “AahahASShHiiITAhoAOH!! MMoOoORREE?!!” Toby couldn’t help but question, dumbfounded by the surprise tickling that’d instantly proven the rest of him wasn’t safe inside the box. None of them were.

Unbeknownst to Ezra, Mike, Toby, or Caleb, the first coating of chocolate syrup that’d been put on their feet was more of an appetizer than anything. Buckets of the sugary liquid sat next to the ends of the boxes ready to be reapplied and licked off until the gallon-buckets were empty. The mystery men that’d put them in that situation took turns sliding under the coffins to get at their pits, stomachs, thighs, ribs, sides, and nipples for another hour, leaving the ‘animals’ at their feet to keep going until they got tired or ran out of syrup. By the morning the lids of their boxes had been removed but they were all too asleep to notice, drained by ticklish exhaustion before the sun ever rose. Caleb was the first one to wake up and jerked as he came to like he was coming out of a nightmare, catching his breath as he sat up to see he was still in the barn and hadn’t dreamt it at all. He looked down to see his legs were free and brought them closer to him as if to keep his feet where he could protect them before looking around and finding a message painted on the barn wall - STAY OUT OF MY WAY OR THIS WON’T BE THE LAST TIME I MAKE YOU LAUGH - A

Caleb cringed at the thought of being tickled or licked again and quickly put his clothes back on that’d been placed on the table his box was attached to, his spooked reaction giving Noel Kahn a smile of satisfaction as he watched the hidden camera footage and patted his blackmailed accomplice, Lucas on the back for a job well done.