Chapter 10

Thursday 27th August 1998

GCSE results day. After two years of hard work – and two months of rest, relaxation and, in our case, fighting monsters with super-powered weapons – it was time to see if it had all paid off.

Bao, Kendal, Zahid and I had planned to meet up at school, pick up our results there and then open them at Dakota’s. As the equivalent Irish exams, the Junior Certificate, didn’t have their results released for another couple of weeks, Dakota wanted to at least be there when we opened ours.

Of course, Zahid had been apprehensive about the idea, insisting he just wanted to open them at school and “rip it off like a plaster”, but wound up giving in with less convincing than I would’ve expected. The big softy!

The day itself was the victim of a seemingly spontaneous heatwave. I was already sporting a sheen of sweat by the time I reached the school, and naturally, while Kendal and Zahid were as prompt as me, we spent ten long, sweltering minutes awaiting Bao. Kendal was almost sluggish, as though the heat had drained even her. I don’t think I’d seen her this low-energy before. By comparison, Bao was oddly sprightly when he finally arrived.

“Let’s get this doooone,” he declared, keeping his momentum and striding past us.

“Hello to you too…” Zahid grumbled, and we followed him into the main hall.

Desks were lined with sealed envelopes. A few non-teacher members of staff were on-hand, ticking us off by form group and handing each of us an envelope with our name on. Inside, our results lay in wait undetermined like Schrödinger’s cat.

With envelopes in-hand, we began a treacherous journey from the school to Dakota’s house, battling the sun itself as it tried to roast us alive. I was honestly wondering if it had become a monster. We wouldn’t have had a chance in hell. Though to be fair, it did feel like we were in hell.

After what seemed like far longer than it must’ve actually been, the four of us had trudged our way to Dakota’s front door, already open as she stood in the doorway with eager anticipation. She was showing more skin than I’d ever seen from her: a tank top presenting her midriff, and loose, flowy shorts that cut off plenty shy of her knees. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail as if to accent the new look. No, I decided; the sun wasn’t a monster, it was a god that I would forever be indebted to for this sight.

“I’ve got drinks with ice on the coffee table, get in quick!” she urged us, stepping aside as we all but tumbled through the doorway. Kendal, the last one through, practically kicked the door shut behind us in what I can only assume was an attempt to keep the heat out. After taking a moment to recover, we were led into the living room, which Dakota had transformed into a safe haven of coolness. The curtains were drawn, two electric fans were blowing in opposite corners, and as promised, five glasses of assorted drinks, each with a couple of ice cubes in them, were stood in a circle on the coffee table.

Once we’d all settled into this little pocket of relative refuge from the heat, we began what I can only describe as Christmas Day come four months early. Each one of us in turn opened our results and read aloud what we’d achieved, with Dakota relishing our reactions like a proud mother. And… we all did pretty well, really. Zahid went first, and he got solid A’s and B’s with an A* in Maths (note, A* is the highest grade). Bao surprised us with a string of A*’s and A’s, with only one B, in French. He made a quip about how good the Chinese were at academia. Kendal had done well too, scoring an A* in PE (that’s Physical Education), a string of A’s, and then a sole B and C.

I came last because I wasn’t hugely eager to check mine. That said, my heart started to beat faster as my turn began and everyone turned to me. I tore open the envelope (after a little struggle… I hate opening envelopes), and slid out the sheets of paper.

Four A*s, including Music. The rest A’s and two C’s. (One of the C’s was Religious Studies, so I was hardly hurt by that.)

“Aaah, wow!” Dakota cheered with a big proud grin. “You’re really smart, Alex! Congratulations!”

“What, did you think I was dumb before now? I didn’t realise you thought so little of me,” I replied with a smirk like hers, the words storming out of my mouth before I could think about it. I felt my gut twinge immediately afterwards.

And her response… was an even more intense smirk back. I suddenly got flashbacks to the Mario Kart incident like a First World War soldier having spontaneous visions of trench warfare. If the heatwave wasn’t grasping at the room past the fans and the ice, I genuinely would’ve shivered.

“You’re right, sorry. Really, though, congrats.”

I think the others were rightly baffled by the exchange – that, or they somehow didn’t register it – as they completely ignored it and congratulated me too. The back-patting ceremony went on across all sides for a couple of minutes, before Bao decided that celebratory ice cream was in order. Instead of warning him off of treading outside until the sun had slunk off beyond the horizon, Kendal agreed with him.

“Really? You want to go back out there?” I asked her in disbelief.

“Sure! It’ll be an endurance challenge!” she beamed.

“You… remember what it’s like out there, right? You were all…”

And I did my best to re-enact her sluggish movements.

“Yeah, but now I’m recharged, I can see how long I can last again!”

Zahid let out one of his trademark sighs next to me.

“I’ll go with them. Someone’s got to make sure they don’t combust out there…”

And before I knew it, I was alone in the living room. Not only had the intrepid trio set off into the great scorched outdoors on a quest for frozen goods, but Dakota had shuffled off upstairs. At a bit of a loss on what to do, I turned the TV on, sat back down at the end of the sofa, and began channel-hopping. After watching a bit of a midday news report on the exam results, I found a documentary about lions. That seemed good enough to bide a little time.

After a minute or two, Dakota wandered back in; she took a glance at the TV, but strode past it without comment, instead taking a book from the cabinet. A bookmark was stuck out from it, so while I didn’t get a good look at the cover, it was clearly something she was partway through. As soon as she passed in front of the screen again, I returned my focus to it. Normally, I would’ve tried to strike up conversation, but it seemed like she wanted to read. Not that she’d get to read much before the others got back. Was she trying to avoid talking with me? Had my teasing bothered her?

Out of the corner of my eye, I registered her sitting down in the armchair next to my end of the sofa, as well as some movement closer to me. I waited a couple of moments, to let her settle and begin reading, and then took a glance to my left. Dakota was lying back, book up, bare feet resting on the arm of the sofa with ankles crossed and oh wow.

… okay, look. I know many of you aren’t going to get this, and that’s fine. I doubt I could explain it to you in a satisfactory way; it’s not like some incident sprung a fetish on me, it’s just there in me. Inarticulable. If that’s a word.

The smooth skin of her soles was bared to me, soft and pinkish, accented by deftly-curved arches. Her adorable toes were gently flexing, alternately on each foot, left, then right, then left, then right. Fearing she’d hypnotise me – fearing she’d catch me – I tore my eyes away and back to the big cats on television. And that lasted all of five seconds before I took another look.

Seriously, though. I know this sounds stupid but my heart was beating as hard as it had before I opened my results. They were… right there. Innocently.

And then I noticed. She was looking at me, smirking victoriously. Oh god, she knew. She… she baited me and I fell right into her trap. How did she even know? Did she catch me sneaking glances the other week?

“You okay?” she asked sweetly.

“Yeah!” I spluttered, trying to answer as quickly and as casually as possible and most definitely failing at the latter.

“Do they smell?”

She wiggled her toes a little more. My eyes darted to them, then back to her face.

“Do they? I mean huh?”

I felt like a spider trapped beneath a glass, desperately scrambling beneath her might with no idea what I was even trying to say or do.

She knew it, and smirked even more devilishly.

“I should probably move them. You don’t want my feet right up next to you, right?”

“Uh! No, it’s- it’s fine! You’re fine! You- you don’t have to!” I assured her without an ounce of composure.

“You suuuure, Alex?” she cooed, waving one of her feet from side to side which invariably caught my attention.

“Y-Yeah…”

You win, Dakota. You and your smirk and your feet.

“Perv,” she dubbed me playfully. “But I don’t mind.”

Huh?

“We’ve got a few minutes. Have some fun.”

I repeat: huh?

“Your face!” she giggled, before smiling earnestly. “Go ahead.”

… so. The girl I like had somehow clocked my fetish, used it to tease me, and was now offering to indulge me in it. I think my mind actually overloaded for a moment, but I recovered swiftly enough. What a miraculous opportunity! Was this a karmic reward for my exam results?

Naturally, I wasn’t going to go all-in on this, but… to touch, perchance to tickle…

I steadily began reaching my right hand out to touch one of her soft, inviting soles, only for something to leap onto her skin before I could make contact.

A fuzzy, indigo bug, about the size of a large beetle, was sat on Dakota’s right sole. Clasping in place with its six legs, it began vibrating its body rapidly against its new station.

And Dakota immediately began laughing in ticklish glee.

“Wha-Whaat’s hahaappening?!” she managed to yell out amidst her laughter.

“Erm… weird… bug thing?” I informed her even as half a dozen more appeared as if from nowhere. One went for the toes of her left foot, three more for her exposed stomach and sides, and the last two for her neck. Almost in-sync, they began pulsating against her, and her reaction only grew more raucous.

“Get off!” I shouted while smacking one of the bugs away from her feet (why is it that people talk to creepy-crawlies when trying to get rid of them?) – it simply clung to my hand and then leapt back to its place.

Yeah, har har, the bug must love feet too.

Dakota was already close to tears, thrashing and squirming with all her teasing superiority gone without a trace. She was yelling out breathless cries of “help!” amidst her howling and cackling. Seeing her in this state wasn’t a far cry from where we were a minute ago, for me. Helpless and tickled senseless…

On balance, I’m grateful that Bao, Kendal and Zahid returned at that moment.

“Hey, Alex!” Bao called out from the hallway. “Have you seen the- why’s Dakota laughing?”

He popped his head around the doorway.

“Oooh… I get it,” he nodded sagely. “I’ll… just put the ice cream in the freezer and then…”

Trailing off, he dashed for the kitchen with two large shopping bags. Kendal and Zahid entered the living room immediately after, both taken aback by the sight of our friend being assaulted by a crack team of fuzzy bugs. He in particular seemed unnerved; she, intrigued as much as bemused.

“I want in on that!” Kendal declared, lifting her shirt to bare her midriff to the creatures.

“Kendal…” Zahid warned her, and she begrudgingly lowered her shirt again.

“Why does she get all the fun…?” she grumbled while Dakota squealed.

“Are you gonna help her?” Zahid turned to me now, almost accusingly.

“I tried! They just zip straight back like they’re magnetised!” I insisted, while Bao returned to the scene like a curious cat. The four of us were standing around poor Dakota as she squirmed.

“So, did these guys come in through the window or something?” he asked nonchalantly.

“… is that the most important question to ask?”

“Oh, right, no, they’re crawling all over the house,” Bao clarified for me.

“Thanks for explaining.”

“Think there’s, like, a nest of them under the house or something?” Kendal proposed, keeping her eyes longingly on Dakota and her tickle-mad assailants all the while. “We’ve had that before with ants.”

“Would make sense,” Zahid nodded, summoning his axe all the while. I mean, the weapons are stored upstairs now, but I guess it saved a little time to just teleport it to-hand.

“I’ll go investigate, I guess. Come with or stay here as you like.”

And he blasted his costume on as he walked off, like a badass.

Bao, Kendal and I shared looks.

“Best that we all go, right…?” I asked.

Nodding affirmatively, Kendal then leant over to our red-faced Irish friend. Another few bugs seemed to have crawled onto her now.

“We’re going to sort this out, okay?” the shorter girl spoke loudly and slowly, as though Dakota’s hearing was impaired by being tickled. “We’ll be back as soon as possible!”

On Dakota’s part… well, she nodded incessantly and that’s all she could manage amidst her howls of twisted pleasure.

We did as Zahid did – even imitating his walking “morph” – and headed out to the back garden, to find him staring at the base of the house with an intense look of dread.

A deep abyss of a crack was settled where the house met the ground, and it was crawling with hundreds of bugs. They hadn’t been particularly unsettling when there were a handful of them on Dakota, but seeing so many in a swarming mass made my skin crawl. And, just like Bao mentioned, they were clambering all over the house.

(As a side note… I’d figured it before, but the heatwave made it even more obvious: this big coat, the long trousers, the boots, all in black, happened to be as cool as a breeze.)

“Yeah. Uh. I’m… not good with insects…” Zahid informed us, taking a couple of shaky steps back. I guess he’d had a similar reaction to me, only magnified. So much for the badass image.

“They don’t seem interested in us…” Kendal observed, kneeling close to the opening to what was presumably their nest. “I wonder why they only went for Dakota?”

“Maybe she’s the most ticklish?” Bao proposed.

I… I said “mhhmmf” at that unwittingly, because I’m desperately sad. The two of them gave me a questioning look (well, Bao seemed to be fighting back a grin), but they returned their attentions to the nest.

“I guess we go in, then?” my pink-themed ally shrugged. “This whole experience is giving me things to tick off my bucket list I never even thought you could do.”

“Go in, find a way to get rid of it, and err, get rid of it. If we don’t stop them now, everyone in the world could wind up being tickled.”

“… yeah, this is a really weird day, even for us,” I sighed. “Tickle Bugs, here we come!”

“Tickle Bugs…” Bao repeated, mulling the name over.

“Yeah, cos they’re- I mean, it’s self-explanatory…”

Right?

Kendal was already diving into the nest at this point, her legs flailing as they slowly followed her upper body into the swarm. Behind us, Zahid was muttering “no, no, no…”

Bao, being a little closer, followed after as soon as Kendal’s feet vanished into the shifting bluish mass, likewise diving in slow motion. And once he too was completely consumed…

“Awh man…” I groaned a little, stepping forward and taking a deep breath before forcing my hands into the nest opening. The horde of Tickle Bugs was surprisingly easy to swim thought, so to speak… the only problem being, the further in I got, the more they started to tickle. Holding my breath became a struggle and my movements got jerkier by the moment.

A hand grabbed mine, and tugged me forward: I finally broke free of the entrance swarm, gasping for breath even as I laughed. Bao had a hold of my hand, and he too was tittering.

“Gotcha, mahahaan!” he insisted as he helped me the rest of the way out. A few bugs remained on me, pulsing away. It’s amazing how much it actually tickled.

As I took in our new surroundings, I realised we were in a huge cavern – honestly, far bigger than the house, and with the ceiling far higher above us than made sense with the short distance under the building we’d actually travelled. The entire cavern too was absolutely crawling with fuzzy insects.

“This way, quuiiick!” Kendal spoke a little distance away, while jiggling about on the spot. Her costume showed the most skin, and so her midriff and thighs were being targeted by the bugs.

The three of us began our ticklish, giggling journey through the nest, moving as swiftly as we could with our bodies taking bizarre fire from its inhabitants. We quickly deduced – and much more slowly discussed – how they must have been tickling us now as we were invading their nest. Wasps sting when threatened, ants bite… Tickle Bugs tickle.

And worryingly, the closer we got to the heart of the nest, the more voracious they got. Wily as they were, they managed to hoist my coat off, then Kendal’s boots, and they would’ve had Bao’s trousers off if not for him holding them up as best as possible.

We were crawling, by the end. Honest to god crawling (and that’s not easy when holding weapons). Crawling and half-naked from these infernal things.

… oh, shut up. Yes, I saw Kendal’s feet too. Happy?

I must have had at least a dozen Tickle Bugs on me, half of them on my now-bare chest and arms. My vision was impaired through tears, my breathing was staggered. Maybe swarm-tickling is actually a really effective means of defence?

The heart of the nest was a column where the swarms on the floor and the ceiling rose up and met. Like some kind of stalactite-stalagmite fusion. At the least, it seemed like the place to go, as it was roughly in the middle of the expansive cavern and was the only instance of the Tickle Bugs coming together like this.

Verbal communication was a time-waster at this point, so I simply rose gradually to my feet and slashed through the column with my sword. In response, the bugs nest-wide only grew more frantic, and I fell to my knees in fits of laughter.

They were protecting something. Was it their queen? Squashing her seemed like our best bet for defeating the swarm.

Kendal attempted to aim her bow towards the column, but the incessant tickling threw her aim off before she could even form an arrow.

Bao, meanwhile, had pretty much surrendered to them already.

Welp. Looked like this one was on me.

With my senses all but overwhelmed, I could only think of one ridiculously-stupid method for ending this (and, I feared, quite possibly ending myself too). I leapt right at the column with all the strength I could muster, and disrupted it with my entire body. In doing so, naturally I coated myself in dozens more of the bugs… but at the same time, the large scarlet queen fell to the ground, with the drones that fell with her desperately trying to submerge her.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you precisely what happened for the next few seconds. My eyes were shut tight for the bugs on my face, and I collapsed to the floor immediately as my nerve endings went into absolute overdrive. The only battle left for me to fight was against my bladder, at this point.

I’m not sure how long I was like that – it was only fleeting, really, even if I felt every excruciating yet still kinda pleasurable second in maddening detail – before I felt the bugs’ assault lessen. The relief was staggering as the insects steadily faded away from my body, and by the time I opened my eyes, I was sprawled on the floor just behind the armchair we’d left Dakota in.

It turns out, Bao had managed to recover himself just enough to slice through the queen. My sacrifice had truly not been in vain. He and Kendal were likewise now on the floor, and they were panting for breath just like me. I could hear Dakota gasping too, and see one of her legs hanging limply off the side of the armchair through my blurry vision. Accompanying our breathy four-part symphony, the TV was singing out an advert for Birds Eye chicken dippers.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was probably the weirdest day of my life, to date.

…

After the four of us finally recovered ourselves (Zahid awkwardly stood by all the while), we discovered the full extent of the weirdness of our costumes. Once we dispelled them, we were as fully-clothed as we’d been before donning them. Makes sense, considering our casual attire seemed to vanish beneath the costumes…

Bao seemed to get over the whole ordeal quicker than the rest of us, as he got himself some ice cream from the freezer. The rest of us wound up getting some too, and maybe an hour after we’d dealt with tickle-driven insects, we were all sat watching another wildlife documentary. Suddenly, persistent heat aside, it all seemed utterly normal.

Except…

“That’s enough for me…” Dakota spoke from the opposite side of the sofa to me, setting her empty bowl of ice cream down on the table. Then, she turned to me and Bao.

“You don’t mind if I stretch out, do you? I’m still pretty knackered.”

“Nah, go ahead!” said Bao, the frozen food pig sat in the middle of the sofa.

Dakota didn’t let me answer. Instead, she shuffled around, laid back, stretched her legs across Bao’s lap, and planted her feet in mine.

I gulped hard. And looked over to her beautiful, giddily-smirking face. She flicked her eyebrows at me. This girl…

“Let’s see what they’re showing on the movie channels!” Kendal insisted, snatching the remote. “We could do a marathon! Results day movie marathon!”

Dakota’s smirk shifted into a playful grin at that, and she wiggled her toes.

I’m still not sure whether I was in heaven or hell, but it was a very long day.