Shepard College was barely big enough to call a university. It looked more like a large park with buildings and a few parking lots. But it wasn’t super expensive and I was told I could finish my degree within three years instead of the usual four. During my third year there, I was tasked with interviewing the chancellor for a report I was working on for class. I’d wanted to write about something else but my professor had insisted that I talk to Chancellor Cooper instead, landing me walking to his office on the far side of campus one Thursday afternoon with my notebook in hand and an annoyed look on my 21 year old face.

I remember wondering why Chancellor Cooper needed such a big office for such a small school. It looked like a small house more than an office, complete with its own doorbell that I rang when I arrived. After a few rings and roughly 10 minutes of waiting, nothing happened. His Porsche was parked on the side so I figured he was there and I never saw anything about specific office hours to make me think he was ignoring me. My report was due that weekend; I’d been putting it off until now so I couldn’t really afford to wait any longer to talk to him. In a brazen move, I grabbed the door handle and twisted it to find it was open, giving me a look into the oversized office.

I poked my head inside and saw no one, no secretary, no staff, nothing. I was reluctant to just walk in but like I said, I needed to interview him that day. It was either walk in unwelcomed or fail my report and I wasn’t about to sabotage my grade just because Chancellor Cooper was too busy to open the door to his own office. After the first few steps on the hardwood floor I began to hear a faint noise, like someone was watching TV with the sound really low. I started to call out ‘hello’ like they do in all the scary movies but something about that seemed like a bad idea; it never turned out well in the movies either.

I found myself creeping down the hall more than walking as if I knew I was intruding but the sound kept getting louder, telling me somebody else must be there. Even if it was someone who worked for him, they could at least tell me when he’d be back. I moved closer to the ajar door at the end of the hall and the voice I’d been hearing became clearer; it was two voices. I tried to make out what they were saying out of fear of interrupting some important conversation but I couldn’t make anything out; there didn’t seem to be any words to understand. It was muffled voices, talking, maybe even laughing? I felt my stomach tightening up as the anticipation intensified, perhaps doing it to myself but the sounds were too strange and ambiguous to put me at ease. I’d never heard anything quite like it.

With my curiosity extremely high and my breathing unsteady, I walked a bit closer until I could peek through the small opening of the door but out of everything that I’d imagined finding, nothing came close to what I saw. There was Chancellor Cooper at his desk, looking back and forth between his computer and the top of his desk with a pen in his hand, casually reverting his attention between the directions as he proved he was the one making the strange sounds I’d heard. Maybe I shouldn’t say make, more like causing.

I looked down and had to cover my mouth in another movie cliché moment to prevent myself from gasping out loud at the sight of the two guys under his desk. Their eyes looked like they were dying to threaten or yell at him but neither of them could talk, their mouths stuffed with black ball gags keeping them from saying anything other than laughing into the rubber gags. As if it wasn’t bizarre enough, these weren’t just any guys; they were Shepard College students. On the left was Davis Green, one of the school’s basketball stars and on the right was Mitchell Hughes, a red-headed Hot Topic kind of guy I knew from freshman year sociology.

They were on their backs, rocking back and forth with their hands tied behind their backs but I couldn’t tell why in the world they were laughing. Why would they be laughing of all things in such a strange, seemingly distressed situation. But then I noticed that Chancellor Cooper was taking notes, or more importantly, what he was taking notes on. Sticking up through his desk were two pairs of bare feet, one pale and pink and the other a light caramel color. I watched in awe as the chancellor ran the pen across the middle of Davis’ left arch and made the 6’3 jock buck on the floor with garbled giggles overflowing past his gag, with Cooper even narrating what he was writing as if just to rub it in.

“Mr. Creed will teach History 102 next semester…and I’ll give History 101 to Mrs. Benson” Chancellor Cooper explained aloud as the ballpoint left ink strokes across the middle of Davis’ size 13. Mitchell looked like he was waiting his turn, dreading the return of the pen to his captive feet as a guy he never would’ve likely even talked too floundered beside him enduring the same treatment. By the time Davis could breathe normally, Mitchell’s plump toes were curling against the ties keeping his feet flat and in place, the anticipation eating him alive until Cooper pulled up the science classes on his computer and got to work arranging next year’s schedule.

“Let’s see…Astronomy is good, Geology looks good, Chemistry though, I think we’ll need to move that around” Cooper decided before picking a spot toward Mitchell’s right heel and making a new note. “mMpHMmAHA!!” the curly-haired 21 year old jerked with fiery sensitivity under the simple back and forths of the black pen writing on his pristine foot. His black earring hit the floor every few thrashes and made me nervous each time, like it might break or something but Mitchell couldn’t control himself, enslaved to react however the pen in Chancellor Cooper’s hand commanded him.

The look of sinister joy on Cooper’s face wasn’t subtle about how much he was loving this. I’d never seen anyone take notes so happily, smiling and grinning with every stroke across the boys’ trapped feet. “It’s nice to have some variety in my notepads. I mean, Davis, your feet are huge and nearly flat with long, skinny toes and Mitchell, yours are what, a size 9 and wider than they are long with cushy strawberry toes. Come to think of it, maybe I should’ve separated which kind of notes I took based on the feet I was writing them on so I don’t get confused when I look back at this. Maybe I’ll scrub them clean and start over” Cooper suggested, earning a wide-eyed look of ‘no fucking way’ from both students. “MmpHMM!!” both bound guys argued from under the desk but Cooper couldn’t see how against the fresh start they were, not that he seemed to care. All he could hear was their whining and muffled shouting. “Yeah, let’s do that. Let me get that brush they use to scrub the carpet…”

“MmhpmMHHM!!!” Davis and Mitchell fumed with newfound anger and fought the desk keeping them hostage harder than they had before. As the chancellor got up to presumably retrieve said brush, I ducked back out into the hall out of sight. I feared making too much noise now that there was no laughter drowning out my footsteps but I couldn’t risk getting caught in that house, not after what I’d just witnessed. I dropped my notebook in the hall and my stomach nearly fell through my butt, forcing me to play deathly quiet again until I heard Cooper sit back down at his desk and the sound of reignited laughter told me he’d found the scrub brush he’d been looking for, allowing me to hurry out of the office while I could.

The next day I couldn’t think of much else other than the scene I’d stumbled upon at the chancellor’s office. My philosophy professor lectured for the whole class and I couldn’t recall a thing I’d heard. My mind was too busy replaying Mitchell and Davis’ reactions to the pen tickling their feet and the way Cooper relished in tormenting them. I didn’t understand. Why would either of them let him do that? Why would the chancellor want to? By the time I was in a class I cared about more, I forced myself to pay attention but when it came to taking notes, my hand refused to work like it normally did. Every word I wrote down reminded me of how much the same simple note taking had gotten one of the school’s best jocks laughing his ass off and made perhaps the hardest looking guy I knew at Shepard whimper into the ball gag like he just couldn’t take it.

As everyone filed out, the TA grad student that was teaching that day made his way over to me as I was packing up my stuff. “How’d your interview go with Chancellor Cooper?” Nick asked. “It uhh…hasn’t” I admitted. “The report is due by Sunday night, you know that right?” “Yeah, I do. I didn’t forget” I answered, finding words hard to choose that wouldn’t give off anything weird about the subject at hand. Part of me wanted to tell him. Nick was cool, only a few years older than me and had a way of making students feel at home with him. I knew the interview wasn’t happening and I knew if I forged it, I ran the risk of bombing the whole class. I had to say something.

“Hey, if I had a really crazy thing to tell you, could it just stay between us?” I asked. “Sure, man. What’s up?” “Alright…so I went to go interview the chancellor yesterday but I couldn’t…” “Ok…why not?” “This is the part that’s gonna sound really crazy but I let myself in because nobody was answering the door and when I walked back to where I thought he was, I saw something…something I don’t know what to make of” I explained, stringing Nick along as I built up the balls to fully explain. “Well, what was it? You’re freaking me out here” “Right, ok, well, Chancellor Cooper was…tickling two students” I admitted like my mouth was forgetting how to work.

“Seriously?? Wait, how do you mean?” Nick questioned. “This story isn’t gonna get any more normal so if you want me to keep going, just be prepared” “I’ve been warned. Shoot” Nick insisted and I laid it all out, obviously surprising him but not as much as I’d expected. “Why aren’t you as freaked as I was yesterday??” “Did you know that I went to undergrad here?” “No, I don’t think so” “Well, I did and Scott Cooper was the chancellor then too. I’d heard some stuff about him, rumors mostly. It was usually stuff like he was having an affair with a professor or that he was skimming money from the school but the wildest one sounds a lot like what you’re talking about. The story I’d heard was that guys who were failing or had gotten in some kind of trouble for something like plagiarism or cheating would be offered a way to erase it" Nick explained. “By tickling?? He’d wipe their record clean in exchange for tickling them??” I asked. “I guess so. One guy I was in Spanish with got caught using his phone to translate during a test, a real meat head kind of guy, and everybody figured he’d be out of the class, that they’d flunk him for it. But the next week, he was back like nothing had happened. I guess that explains why” Nick concluded, blowing my mind in the process.

“Holy shit…should we tell somebody about this?” I questioned. “I mean, I don’t know…it’s not a crime. If he was kidnapping students and tickling them that’d be one thing but if the guys are agreeing to getting tickled, if they’re consenting to it to cover up something bad that they did or to fix their grade, maybe it’s not worth reporting. It sounds like they made a deal” Nick offered. “But what about the school? You don’t think they care if people plagiarize or cheat?” “The chancellor is kind of the big dog here; I don’t know if anybody higher up would even buy the whole thing if you did report it” Nick pointed out, forcing me to realize he was right. As crooked as it may be, maybe it wasn’t my business. It wasn’t really fair to the other students I guess but academic integrity wasn’t really a hill I was willing to die on. I wasn’t exactly a straight-A student myself.

The following week started a new semester and who wound up in one of my new classes but Davis Green. He took a seat next to me coincidentally enough and we’d never said two words to each other so I didn’t start now, despite what I knew about him. Dr. Crane talked about her syllabus and what her expectations were for most of the class and every time I looked over at Davis, his eyes were either partially closed or his head was about to fall off the hand keeping it propped up. After class I made the choice to ask him if he was alright, “Yeah, bro, I’m fine…just tired. You know how it is” “Yeah, sure. Coach have you guys training hard already?” “What? Yeah, yeah, training’s a bitch, man” Davis answered like he had to stop himself from giving a different reason why he was so tired.

I felt bad for him. He was super popular on campus and may go onto play professional basketball one day but he was dragging, not the lively class clown everyone knew him to be. The tickling agreement must be more than a one-time deal and apparently it was wearing him out. I saw Mitchell in the cafeteria later that same day and he was just as sleepy, struggling to eat his pizza at the table. Him I knew a little better; I’d worked with him on a project a couple of years earlier in class and felt like I could actually talk to him easier. “Hey, mind if I sit down?” I asked. “Kevin? Do you normally eat in here?” “I’m trying to stop spending so much money on fast food. This is cheaper” “Right” Mitchell answered, still as full of angsty attitude as ever. “Listen, I was trying to do an interview with the chancellor recently and I couldn’t get ahold of him. You ever been to his office or anything? I tried but nobody came to the door” I asked, wanting to see what he’d say. “Never met the guy” “Oh, really? Damn. Well, I thought I’d ask” “I heard he’s a prick though” “Yeah?” How so?” “It’s not that complicated, man, some people are just pricks” “Right…right” I answered, unsure how to progress.

“I heard he’s a big note taker…” I added, knowing I was risking getting my head bitten off by Mitchell. “The fuck are you talking about?” “Ya know, taking notes” I answered as his freckled face grew tighter. “I was there a couple weeks ago…I saw you and Davis” I explained, ready to jump up from the table if I had to. I wasn’t looking to get punched out but I couldn’t let the whole thing go. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You didn’t see shit” he denied. “Come on, Mitchell. You don’t mistake seeing something like that. That’s fucked up. I know he’s helping you guys but it seems like he’s really making you work for it” “Well when you get caught smoking weed in the parking lot, it’s either that or getting kicked out of the only school that I could afford to go to. That answer your little questions??” Mitchell fired back, surprising me with his admission.

“I get it, I do. We all screw up. But you shouldn’t be indebted to Cooper forever. I saw Davis in class earlier today and he was like a zombie, a lot like you’re looking” I pointed out. “Yeah, so what. You gonna fix it, Superman?” “Maybe we can work together, to get back at him or something. If guys are willing to get tickled to cover up a mistake, that’s one thing but Cooper seems to be running with this thing” “What do you suggest? Seems like you’ve been thinking about this” “I don’t know…maybe the punishment should fit the crime?” I offered just off the top of my head but a grin grew on Mitchell’s face at the idea. “Look at you coming up with good ideas” “You think Davis would want in?” “I don’t know. I don’t really know the guy” “Me neither. I’ll at least extend the invitation” “What a guy” Mitchell answered with his usual sarcasm before we started on a plan.

Mitchell returned to the chancellor’s office the following Wednesday for a scheduled ‘meeting’. Davis couldn’t make it due to basketball practice and was due to report the following day, meaning Mitchell was going solo. “Mr. Hughes, nice to see you again” Chancellor Cooper greeted with a smile beneath his mustache. “How long does this shit have to go on for, man?” Mitchell complained as he stood in front of the desk. “Well, that’s up to me isn’t it? Did you forget socks today like I asked?” Mitchell rolled his eyes and lifted up his jean leg to show he wasn’t wearing any. “Excellent. I’m ready if you are” “Whatever, dude” Mitchell answered before putting his bag down and starting to get into position when his body went limp and he fell to the ground.

“Oh my God! Mitchell! Mitchell!” Cooper shouted in shock, fearing what’d happened to him and more importantly that it’d happened in his office. The chancellor had his back to his closet trying to assess Mitchell’s state, allowing me to burst out from it and nail him one good time with the pocket taser I’d stolen from my sister. “AaGH!” Cooper collapsed just like we knew he would and Mitchell perked right up, getting to his feet and helping me execute the rest of the plan. “Hey! What’s going on?!” Cooper demanded to know as we dragged him over to his desk. “It’s called revenge, bitch!” Mitchell answered with devious spice as we moved quick before Cooper could get his full bearings back, manipulating his trick desk until he was on his back on the floor under it and his feet were locked in the same holes he’d kept so many pairs of handsome collegiate feet in.

“The hell are you doing?! Are you crazy?? Let me go!!” Cooper shouted with an authority he was used to, kicking around and reaching up to try and free his legs but the holes in the desk couldn’t be unlocked from beneath. “Get his shoes” I instructed and Mitchell mirrored me as we ripped off the expensive loafers and revealed two large sheer socked-feet, likely a size 12 or 13. “Put my shoes back on now! This is insane!” “I know what you’ve been doing, Mr. Chancellor and you’re gonna let Mitchell and Davis and anyone else you’ve made a deal with off the hook” I explained. “Mitchell, what the hell is he talking about??” “He knows, man; he saw us. Now say you’re dropping this tickling shit!” Mitchell ordered. “Are you saying you want to be kicked out for drugs, Mr. Hughes?? All it would take is a few emails” Cooper threatened. “I’m kind of glad he’s still being an asshole; I wanna make him cry like a little bitch” Mitchell asserted before grabbing the right toes in his hand to anchor Cooper’s foot and unleashing on the helpless sole.

“AhAAGhgHGNNOO!! GGOoODDDAaAmMMiIITT!! GGEETToOOOFFMmEEE!!” Cooper erupted after a brief attempt to control himself. I wasn’t a tickle fiend myself, not like the chancellor but punishing him this way was too much karmic justice to get at him any other way. I went in with both hands at once, scratching along the balls with one and the lower half of his meaty foot with the other, instantly cranking his mature laugh up a few notches. “AhAHAASSTTOOOP!! IIIMMMEEAAhAHANNNIIITT!!” “You hear that? He means it” Mitchell mocked as he tickled like a real bastard hellbent on returning the favor.

Scott Cooper was about 54 and traditionally handsome but years of drinking and cigars had aged him a little more than he naturally would’ve looked. His wavy brown hair was sprinkled with salt and his figure was decent, tall and sort of broad but now with large gut to boot. His feet were high-arched with rich, thick balls and juicy toes but nothing looked disproportionate or exaggerated. They looked even bigger stuck in the desk than in shoes but Mitchell and I didn’t have any trouble handling them.

“YYoOOUubBOoOYYSSAaRREEDDoOOnNNEE!!” Cooper assured as our army of fingers dominated his sheer feet. “The only thing that’s done is these old-man socks” Mitchell assured before grabbing the top of the right one and yanking it off, showing how smooth the chancellor’s soles were, not soft or supple per say but satiny and rather nice. “Let me out of this, NOW or you’re both kicked out!” Cooper demanded. “We’re not the ones trapped in our own desk” I pointed out before grabbing the hairbrush I’d brought from my apartment and putting it to good use. “AGGAhAHAHWWhHAATTTiIIISSTTTHhaAhAHATTT?!?! SSTTOOPPIIITT!! SSTTOOOOPPP!!” Cooper exploded with horrified disbelief in his voice as the brush’s bristles scrubbed across his socked foot, seemingly aided by the thin material. “The brush must tickle pretty bad huh, Scotty?” Mitchell teased before forcing the right foot down a little so he could lasso a few of the toes in the ties attached to the desk, typically hidden along with the feet holes by a large planner.

“NnOOO!!” was all the chancellor had time to say before Mitchell, now armed with two of the pens that’d tickled his own feet, were drawing all over the wrinkly sole at his mercy. Cooper’s smokey laugh doubled within a couple seconds, rocketed into a more humiliating reaction as the boys gave the esteemed chancellor a taste of his own medicine. “AAahAhAHAHANNOO!! AOhAOHASSSTTOOOPP!! SSTTTOOOOOPAAOHAOHA!!!” Cooper howled until his voice cracked with high-pitched laughter and he was sweating through his white button-down. “Come on, give me some tears, fuck face!” Mitchell encouraged as he zig-zagged and dragged the pens from one side of Scott’s foot to the other, not even bothering to do anything as tamed as tracing the lines of his sole like Cooper loved to do with them. I started concentrating on the base of his toes and got a wonderfully violent reaction, putting a sharper smile on Mitchell’s face as I continued moving the unforgiving bristles from side to side to make sure I tickled him as much as I could.

At one point, close to 20 minutes in, the door to the room burst open and I really thought we were screwed. We couldn’t explain this. We’d be kicked out of school for sure, if not arrested. But to mine and Mitchell’s relief, it was Davis Green. “Damn, you guys really got him” Davis laughed like he couldn’t believe we’d succeeded or that Chancellor Cooper was actually in such a position. “Davis! Help me out!!” “Nah, man, I’m here to join the party” Davis assured with an eager grin as he got down on the floor and grabbed Cooper’s arms to force them up over his head. “No! Davis, NO! Don’t! Help me ooUUAohAATT!!” Mr. Chancellor tried to convince before Mitchell and I got back to destroying his white-collar feet, followed by Davis pinning his arms down with his knees and sinking into Cooper’s armpits with his giant hands.

“AAAhAGGAAAHAHFFuUUUUCCCKK!!” rang out into the back room of the small house/large office like Cooper knew how fucked he was as the long, strong fingers dug around in his pits like claws and Mitchell and I gave his feet hell. I worked the brush as evilly as I could and Mitchell soon had his right sole almost totally covered in ink, convincing him to go to his toes next. “I’m running out of room up here, man…I might have to get that scrub brush and clean your foot off so I can start again!” Mitchell suggested. “AAhoAOHAAANnOOAOOAOH!!” was all the desperate chancellor could say as the gang tickling rocked his world, forcing out heavy, tortured laughter while he squirmed on the floor and his belly jiggled back and forth.

“Give me that sock back” Mitchell soon decided and surprised me by slipping the discarded sock between Cooper’s big and second toes before sawing it back and forth, earning a raspy shriek from the head of Shepard College. “What a little girl!” Mitchell taunted as he pulled the sock back and forth and made the chancellor roar and flop around like he needed an exorcism. I even failed to keep tickling as much as I was just from being captivated watching Mitchell at work; he seemed to be a naturally devilish tickler who got worse the more broken Cooper sounded. Davis soon went after his ribs and neck, wiggling between his mild double chin and collar bone while his other hand drilled between his ribs. The man that’d once graced the cover of the state paper as a pillar of the community and that’d been awarded honors and notoriety for his work at the school was now a sweaty, bumbling, begging mess in his own office at the hands of his own students. How the mighty had fallen.

Mitchell, Davis, and I were all curious what would happen after that day. We hadn’t stopped until he had a giant wet stain on the crotch of his gray slacks and he was saying every embarrassing, emasculating thing Mitchell could think to make him admit on top of agreeing to give up the tickle deals. He’d also agreed to forget about Davis and Mitchell’s transgressions. That part hadn’t been sealed until we’d all triple-teamed his stomach. Not that his feet weren’t seriously ticklish but his belly had turned out to be his real kryptonite; a couple raspberries from Mitchell had even earned him the chancellor tears he’d wanted.

A few weeks later Chancellor Cooper sent out a school-wide email announcing his resignation from the job. His reason for leaving was said to be to move closer to his parents but we knew that wasn’t the truth. Maybe he feared his ticklish dealings getting out and ruining his reputation or maybe he wasn’t interested in being chancellor anymore if he couldn’t fulfill his own desires. But the real reason he was leaving was likely what happened once we’d cracked him that day. Mitchell had found the list of students on campus he’d been tickling and invited them to a private meeting at the chancellor’s office while he was still locked in his own desk, even attaching a picture for proof. By the end of the night Chancellor Cooper was smart enough to know that the longer he spent at Shepard College, the better chance he ran of finding himself at the hands of merciless, tickle-hungry students once again. He’d rather be temporarily unemployed than suffer like that again.