Trapped in the Featherlands

Escape from the Castle

Looming shadows of the torches constant flickering caused shadows to dance against the walls of Tickela's holding chamber, often times to a haunting melody of screaming laughter. Paul sat within his cell. Sweat rolled down his face from the damp heat which encompassed the entire open room. The young boy pulled his knees into his chest. He gazed down at his bare feet, moist with sweat, down below him. Paul cursed his body, primarily for its sensitivity. To defy the evil witch, approaching her and overthrowing the entire Badland kingdom without fear of her cruel torments remained a burning fantasy within his mind. He thought back to his dad, awaiting his arrival with the most optimistic outcome, though reality elluded to him being trapped within Tickela's possession forever. Paul knew that time did not exist in the same way in the Featherlands that it did back home. There, time did not move and people did not age, giving an either pleasant or horrifying consciousness to the concept of eternity. He would either spend his there, or somehow make it back to the Featherlands, though his predictions always seemed to lie on the former.

As Paul listened to the agonizing shrills of his majesty, Queen Silvia, in one of the chamber's many rooms dedicated to tickle torture, he thought back to life before he and his father moved to study the Featherlands. The type of threat that faced him was not one considered upon their arrival. He remembered much about life before. Paul remembered the schools, his friends, holidays spent with the rest of his family, and all of the magic that came with a life ever changing. Through his time, Paul came to enjoy the Featherlands immensely, but often times, especially under an evil tickle witch's captivity, he longed to return home, where everything he knew and loved would be waiting for him as if no time had passed at all.

His nostalgia was cut short when he noticed that he could no longer hear Silvia. Hours had passed since the guards had taken her for one of her many daily tickle routines. Not hearing the laughter meant one of two things: either the guards were bringing her back or her body had shown the girl mercy by relinquishing consciousness. Either typically meant that they were about to withdraw another captive. Paul ran to the bars on his cell to peer down the hall. The boy saw two piggly brutes leave the cell and begin walking toward the stairs in the opposite direction.

"How long do you think she'll be out?" asked one of the torturers.

"Who knows," answered the other. "She's not going anywhere anyway. I need a break anyway; arms were sure getting tired from turning that wheel." The two grunts began ascending up the stairs. The further that Paul pushed himself against the bars to see down the hall, the further he discovered he was going through them. The slickness of the sweat that covered him served as a type of oil that caused the boy to slide more efficiently through the bars. Taking the only chance he felt he had, Paul decided that, though the bars were still quite close together, he could actually slip all the way through if he tried hard enough. Forcing his slick body against the bars, the boy strained and grunted through the pain of compression until he slipped through, falling to the dusty floor outside of his cell. Paul looked around to see if anyone noticed him. He laughed at how easily it was for him to escape, but his smile quickly faded. The terror of getting caught and punished nearly outweighed his desire to escape. The bars to the cell were merely a formality to the thought of being disciplined for fleeing captivity.

Paul's determination to rescue his friend and queen still pushed him forward. The boy quietly tip toed his way down the damp catacomb toward the torture cells. Upon reaching the one that the guards had taken Silvia, Paul peered in through the small barred opened on the door. Silvia was quiet and still, her body limp and stretched out with the rack. A large rolling brush was placed underneath her tiny bare feet with a crank that branched outward to be manually turned. Behind Silvia was a long wooden table with an iniquitous assortment of tools and devices to extract maximum amounts of laughter from their victims. Paul gently pulled the door, relieved to find that it unlocked, and creeped inside.