Jasmine's Story

Jasmine stood before the easel, brush in hand, carefully studying her canvas. On it was a woman's bare feet, the soles exposed. Dipping her brush into the palette of warm hues, she began to craft the details on her canvas. The gentle strokes followed the contours, her touch imitating how soft the soles looked. A small giggle escaped her lips, bubbling up unexpectedly. How strange, she thought, quickly glancing around the painting class to see if anyone had noticed. The other students were similarly engrossed, their brushes dancing across their canvases rhythmically. Yet with each stroke they made, Jasmine felt an uncanny tingling on her own feet. She bit her lip to stifle the growing urge to laugh, her brow furrowing in confusion. What was happening?

Another wave of ticklish laughter threatened to burst forth as invisible feather-light touches teased along the bottoms of her feet. Jasmine's cheeks flushed as the maddening sensations rippled up her soles and between her wriggling toes. Her eyes darted around the room once more. The other students remained focused, brushes stroking the canvas in time with the licks of imaginary brushes sweeping over Jasmine's bare feet. The first bubbles of laughter escaped her lips, the others in the room paid her no heed. She felt the sensations intensify as if in response to her mirth.

"S-stop! Please, you have to stop!" Jasmine pleaded between escalating peals of laughter.

But the others didn't react, brushes continuing to tease against their canvases in maddeningly light strokes. A fresh torrent of ticklish sensations sparked along the soles of Jasmine's feet with each artistic flick of their wrists. She hopped from one foot to the other, desperately trying to contain the fit of giggles that shook her entire body. That's when the horrifying realization struck - the people surrounding her were no longer her classmates, but a nightmarish troupe of grinning, face-painted clowns! Their vibrant, garish makeup seemed to bleed into disturbing, malformed smiles that stretched grotesquely across their features. Jasmine's heart pounded as she took in the kaleidoscope of colored wigs, floppy shoes, and goofy yet sinister expressions locked onto her squirming form.

"P-please... !" she gasped out.

Finally, the clowns acknowledged her, but instead of stopping, they merely grinned wider in eerie silence, brushes never ceasing their maddening strokes against the canvas. Jolts of delicious ticklish torment burst along every inch of Jasmine's desperately wriggling feet. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying in vain to blot out the nightmarish scene, when suddenly...darkness. Her eyes flew open with a start, chest heaving. Jasmine found herself back in her bedroom, sheets tangled and sticking to her sweat-soaked skin. The clown's disturbing painted smiles seemed to linger in the shadows. She stared down at her bare feet, half-expecting to see the torturous tingles resume at any moment. But they were still and calm in the night.

Jasmine lay still as the remnants of the clown nightmare slowly faded. She stared up at the shadows dancing across her bedroom ceiling, unbidden memories surfacing - flashes of her life spent as the constant target for tickling torment. There were many times she was held down by friends and family alike, while ruthless fingers wiggled along tender arches and between each squirming toe. To this day, her sisters still saw her bare feet as open targets for torment whenever she visited home. Even her so-called best friends, Lila, Maya, and Tessa, had been known to betray her on occasion. Jasmine sighed, hugging her knees to her chest as she felt her toes curl instinctively.