The wheel spun in a colorful display of blue and gold. It passed gold just as it started to slow down, and I was certain it would just stop halfway before the next one. I was wrong; inch by inch, it edged closer, painfully slowly, to the next gold line, until it stopped... just on the gold mark!
"Congratulations!" the clown said, handing us two gold tickets. "When you enter, there'll be a staircase to your right. Take that, and show your ticket to someone at the top. They'll take you to your seats. Enjoy the show!"
He waived at us, and we followed his directions. At the top of the stairs, we saw another clown, a young woman. At first, I thought she was wearing slim, form-fitting clothing too, like we saw before: bright red leggings and a top that was orange on the left side and blue on the right. But when we got closer I saw that I was wrong: she was wearing only bright red panties, and a pair of pasties covering her nipples; the rest was body paint.
"Hi there," she greeted us. "My name is Duster. Can I see your tickets?"
I showed them to her, desperately trying - and failing - to look at her face and not anywhere else on her nearly naked body.
"Thanks. Now follow me," she said.
We did, and she led us to a large room. Its walls were full of panels, I guess to help keep the sound out. It had a large glass stripe at the front that looked down to the arena below us. At the middle of the room, there were the stocks as promised. Next to the, on a table, a set of different tools and aids for tickling: feathers, paintbrushes, baby oil, feather dusters, electric toothbrushes. These people were taking their tickling seriously.
"So," Duster said, "which one of you will be the lucky one today, and which one of you will be stuck doing all that tedious tickling?"
I exchanged a look with Jenna.
"You do it," she said. "You're the one who spun that wheel."
"You're the one who brought us here," I replied. "Isn't this what you wanted?"
Of course, I don't think either of us really dreaded the idea of getting tickled; but both of us would much rather tickle the other. After some bickering, we settled down, and decided who was going to get tickled by the other person.