You can't.

You hang there on your cross suffering in ticklish agony for what seems like forever, but the mouth tickling doesn't stop. You wonder what's taking so long when you unfortunately get the answer. From the dark emerge more rotating brushes and water jets, too many to count. The slow methodical step by step cleaning is done.

Wire like restraints reach out and wrap around your fingers pulling them back exposing your palms, the same happens to your toes, pulling them taut and spreading them wide. Like the arms of a dozen spiders spinning brushes hover around your body, twirling and now dripping small streams of soapy bubbles.

Finally the brushes inside your mouth stop, but don't retract. You're left hanging in partial darkness, panting to catch your breath, and all you can do is stare at the mirror.

Poised to strike, pairs of brushes at your arm pits, small ones hovering over your palms, a half dozen at your ribs, four at your tummy plus one small one right above your navel, four up and down your sides, one at either side of your hip, two on the inside of each thigh, one behind each knee, and countless tiny ones at your soles, with of course 4 conical ones at each poised to quit in between each toe.

You hang there, the sounds of this army whirring, the sweet bubblegum smell of the soap wafting into your recently cleaned nose. You can feel the air moving in your mouth as the brushes there have started up again but aren't making contact yet. You'd hyper ventilate at the panic but somehow you can't find it into yourself to be afraid. You're not brave, you don't think you can handle it. You've just resigned yourself. There's no way to avoid what's coming. You're just going to take it until your body can't anymore. This is your punishment. You earned this. If you hadn't chased that reward, if you hadn't gotten in over your head with the whole private eye thing, hell maybe if you just listened to that guard when they told you to hold still, you wouldn't be here. Your head swims, and you imagine another version of you on the other side of the mirror, about to pull the level, because that's basically what's about to happen. You signed your own **** warrant, and now you're going to pay.

The moments seem to hang on forever, like a gulliotine frozen mid air. You wait, and wait. At first your whole body is tense, like corded wire. Slowly eventually you begin wondering if something is wrong. Maybe the machine thinks it's cleaning you but it isn't. You close your eyes thinking you're hallucinating and that this isn't happening. And still the whirring continues. Sweat drips down your body. You start panicking and breathing heavy. And still you wait. You try to pull at your bonds, wondering what's going on. You scream at the top of your lungs, but still nothing happens. What you presume is minute after minute of frenzied waiting passes by with that whirring noise, that smell of the soap, and the soft breeze in your mouth being the only constant. Eventually your muscles and mind give out, and you go slack, just hanging there on the cross.

And that's what the brushes were waiting for. All at once the dozens of brushes descend in unison. From the roof of your mouth to the tips of your toes, your body becomes one mass of ticklish energy. Your body begins spasming, noises you didn't think you could make coming out form your gagged mouth. Your pupils dilate and soon you can't focus, only vaguely seeing in the mirror the form of a body, somehow disconnected from your own, being destroyed, twitching and shaking as brushes travel up and down it's ribs and sides, swirling around it's tummy, and over and over again tracing every inch of it's taut immobile feet.

Your head begins feeling hot. Your brain can't process all of the stimuli at once. Your entire body is just one large feeling of ticklishness screaming at you. There's so many conflicting shouting sensations that you can no longer tell one body part from the other. Even the spots where you don't currently have a brush are feeling attacked, you swear even your teeth and eyeballs are being tickled some how. Eventually you begin seeing more arms coming in, some human, some tentacles, some long wispy feathers, then faces emerging from the dark smiling and laughing, taking pleasure in your torment. You feel the feathers sliding around and into your ears, strange tongues lapping at your soles and thighs, nails digging in to your back and buttocks. You see monitors showing places like Times Square and Shibuya crossing, with your suffering form on the jumbo screens, thousands, maybe millions of strangers watching you writhe in ticklish agony. On smaller screens news reporters tell the tale of a foolish loner who tried to break into the worlds most secure reformatory, and now will never leave the cross you see him on now. For hours, days you watch this, more tools come in, invading your mouth, your ears, your nose, every inch and crevice of your body, while the whole world watches and laughs at your misfortune. You're going to live the rest of your life in this agony, and die up here, if you can even die. You've given up that this is hell, and you've earned your place here.

Then a splash of cold water hits your entire body. You wake up, panting and exhausted. Apparently at some point during the cleaning you slipped out of consciousness. You look once more into the mirror. The restraints have been mostly removed. Your mouth is free again, your neck no longer held in place, but you are still secured at the wrists, ankles, and waist.

You barely recognize the creature in the mirror, naked and frail. You watch the cold water drip off you slowly, and you remember what the orderly said. Now all that's left is orientation. And you hang there waiting.