Klutz Moment (crimmy story submission, Voodoo/Tickling/Insects)

Story by Mimiga

Writing contest Participant #1

Please check out their work at:

♥ https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimiga

♥ https://www.furaffinity.net/user/mimigaagua


Deep in the most secluded part of the forest, beyond ages of undergrowth and trees so old that the moss growing on their trunks had multiple generations, sat a raggedy cabin where the walls were rotting and the roof grew bushels of fungus. The silence that normally gripped these parts of the woods was as deafening as it was ominous. On this cloudy day in particular, a screech finally broke that monotony, followed shortly by the resounding slam of a door whose lock was broken by a tackling charge.

A wolf stumbled out into the open, a grimace on his face as his eyes adjusted poorly to the light of day. Behind him came a continued stream of squawking and otherworldly curses. He was still in shock that his plan had worked in the first place, but there was no time to admire his handiwork. That crow wouldn’t be tangled up for long. He took in a lungful of the stagnant air and ducked into the brush.

Clutched beneath the wolf’s arm was a little patchwork doll. He kept it close to his body, making sure that the thorns in the thickets would catch on his fur instead of the toy. He had grabbed it in the heat of this escape, knowing that the witch had been planning something with it, but he had never found out exactly what. It was still better that he had it, anyway.

Though the wolf could only run for so long. The forest was as dense as it was vertical, and after a few minutes he was already too tired to keep going. He ducked behind the cover of a massive trunk and caught his breath. It was then that he finally took a look at the totem he had stolen.

The doll was in his image–that much he could easily tell. From the tail made of fur that surely came from his own, to the little snout that had been made from a cone of fabric, down to the beady eyes made from two brown pebbles. It would’ve almost been cute had it not been so distressingly creepy. Panting still, he brought two fingers together and pinched at the doll’s side, only to yelp at the sudden pressure that manifested near his stomach. Too loud. He couldn’t stop here.

The trees began to clear the further he got, but the terrain only grew rougher. Sheer clay cliffs and steep inclines stood in his path and forced him to weave through the landscape. When he wasn’t scrambling up slopes with his one free hand, he was struggling not to slip on slick patches of mud and moss. It was only a matter of time before he-

His foot slid out from underneath him. The wolf braced himself and landed hard on his behind, catching himself on the bottoms of his palms and bruising both. He swore out loud, the curse tapering off into an exhausted huff. The annoyance quickly gave way to distress. The doll was gone.

He scrambled to his feet and scanned his surroundings. There wasn’t much growth around to hide the toy, which made it all the more frightening that it had disappeared. After a wasted minute of panic, he finally saw its beady eyes staring up at him from the bottom of a crevice in the earth. It had fallen into the crack between a cliff and the flat face of an angular boulder.

Try as the wolf might, he just couldn’t quite reach the doll. He braced against the side of the stone and shoved his whole arm down to the shoulder, but his claws were still an inch away from so much as grazing the toy. Was there a better angle he could try?

A gasp caught in his throat. He jumped straight up and brushed at his fur, a shudder running down his spine. There must’ve been a bug crawling on him or something. He hissed and slapped at his chest when the feeling didn’t go away. There wasn’t anything in his coat from what he could see. Was it just some random sensation from the fatigue, or… Oh no.

Looking again, the doll wasn’t the only thing in that crevice. There were little black dots crawling around–an ant colony that had made this crack their home were coming out to investigate the disturbance. The wolf rushed to grab it a second time, but his arm hadn’t grown any longer since his last attempt, and the insects had only grown more curious.

It started as a little itch–just an uncomfortable feeling on his torso, briefly touching his forearms and leaving again. He could ignore it at first, even if it was distracting. It wasn’t until one of the ants touched the armpit of the doll that he recoiled from the hole and clutched at the same space. He quickly recentered himself and tried to find a new angle to reach from.

The damage had already been done. That one little prick was like an avalanche, transforming the discomfort into something else entirely. At first the wolf’s breathing only hitched, but a set of crawling legs made him grasp at his stomach with his free hand. It moved to his side and caused his whole body to arch away. Another ant joined in and briefly inspected that same armpit with its antennae, urging him to reel back and protect the sensitive area. It didn’t do any good, anyway. His hands couldn’t block what wasn’t actually there.

It only got worse. The corners of his mouth began to curl. His already labored breathing cracked as a giggle bubbled up into his throat. His grasping for the doll became a desperate scrambling instead, interspersed with involuntary twitches as he tried to dig at the wall of earth for more room. He nearly squealed when an ant crawled between the ground and the toy, brushing against the small of back and trailing upwards. The laughter he’d been damming up finally burst out from behind his fangs.

The sound of flapping wings came on the breeze. Fear rushed in and temporarily eclipsed the sensations all over his body. The wolf dashed off down into a thicker part of the forest, nearly tripping as something brushed against his paw. He slid down a slope and ducked beneath the roots of a massive fallen tree, pressing himself into the soft undergrowth in the hopes that the shelter would hide him away.

Almost as soon as he stopped moving, the tickling came back in full force. For as tight a ball as he curled up into, it still felt as though he was fully exposed, dozens upon dozens of tiny legs crawling all over him. A snort left the wolf’s nose–just an ounce of willpower away from becoming a full-blown chuckle. Above his own muffled snickering, he heard the crow land nearby.

“Where are you?!” her shrill voice scraped at his ears. “I know you’re here! Come out!”

His hands went from his underarms to his snout. The only thing he could do to keep from bursting out laughing was hold his own mouth shut, but it wasn’t working. He could only hold his breath for so long, but despite his tensed diaphragm his stomach was still convulsing with withheld laughter. A loud caw echoed out over the landscape and reminded him to stay quiet.

They were all over him. A seemingly endless storm of legs poked all over torso, brushing over his stomach and prodding at his sides. They crawled on his back and scribbled at his neck. One even seemed interested in his ear, which he didn’t even know was ticklish until this very moment. The worst ones of all skittered lower than that, inspecting between his thighs and crawling on his hips. The wolf kicked his legs out of the shade against his will, but no amount of struggling helped at all.

It was somehow worse on his feet. The doll only had crude nubs where his paws would have been, but whenever one of the ants happened to touch them, the sensation came in much lighter and more feather-like, and it seemed to completely envelop his pads. It was like somebody was dragging a fuzzy fabric over his paws, and no matter how much he scrunched his toes or splayed them out, he couldn’t escape the feeling.

Just when a chuckling whimper was about to escape his lips, the thud of two talons landed on the trunk that he was hiding under. Once more he was able to suppress the tickling, but it flooded back in just as quickly. The longer he was away from that doll, the more the little legs of the ants started to feel like fingers teasing up and down his body, the more it made him want to squirm.

“Where are you, little pet?” the witch hissed, clicking her beak in annoyance. “Where did you go?!”

She wasn’t more than a meter away. The wolf was right under her nose, writhing against the earth as muscles fired off in desperation. His hands grasped at the edge of his snout while his lips curled upwards and his lungs burned for air. He was gonna scream. There was no way he could hold it in for much longer. It was filling up his chest and rising in his throat. Something skittered around his neck as if urging him to finally erupt.

With a scoff, the crow turned heel and took off into the air. The wolf counted the beats of her wings as they faded into the distance, then counted the seconds beyond that, his thoughts barely coherent as more than a single pair of antennae began to inspect the space between his legs. He wheezed out the air he’d kept deep in his lungs, leaned forward as a deafened laugh poured out from his throat, gasped, then immediately fell into hysterics.

Holding his aching stomach, he jumped out of his hiding place and rushed for the crevice. The wolf stumbled more than he ran, practically crawling back up to the boulder while the colony tortured him to death. His breathless pleas were interspersed between unstoppable waves of giggling. Everything was ticklish now. His forearms, his knees, his hands–everywhere. By the time he’d reached that crack again he was more winded than when he’d ran all the way here. Even now, the doll was out of reach.

It took the wolf nearly a minute to think of what to do. He managed to grab a stick off the ground despite all the places his hands wanted to protect. Returning to the crevice, he plunged the twig in and began to nudge the doll closer to the side of the boulder where he could reach in at a favorable angle. He felt the pressure of the stick push down on his head, but it was nothing compared to the ants.

Then the doll got stuck. No matter how much he tried to jimmy it free, the dimensions of the crack would not allow it to move any further, though his constant shaking wasn’t helping. Eyes blurry from the tears that were streaming down his face, the wolf sucked in a breath and swung the stick into the crack.

He immediately doubled over and held the side of his head like someone had punched him right below the ear. The pain shocked him out of the tickling long enough to see that he’d punted the doll straight out of the hole. He dove across the ground for it, barely noticing the hard landing as he swept it into his grip and began to brush off all the insects that still crawled over it.

Finally, he could breathe. A ringing sound had filled the left side of his head and he was still giggling as if something was still crawling on him, but he was free. The relief nearly brought him to his knees. The doll itself stared at him with as blank an expression as ever. It was hard to believe how detailed it all felt when the image of him was so crude.

Glancing over his shoulder at the treeline, he furrowed his brow and scraped at the doll’s side with the tip of his claw. He regretted the gesture almost instantly, nearly dropping the thing onto the ground as he relapsed into hysteria. He held the toy to his chest and gathered what little remained of his composure.

There was no time to fool around. He could still hear that flapping in the distance. With a shivering sigh, the wolf took off into the forest.