The Joke's That Make You Laugh
Notes: Inspired by this post by @nhasablogg because I've been fixated on the concept ever since I saw it. Anyways, Wonka gives off insane lee energy and I refuse to believe he wouldn't get up to shit like this. Based on the new Wonka movie.
Summary: Wonka's newest chocolate creation has him in stitches.
Willy's heart raced as he looked down at the creation on his table. It was a beautiful thing. The appetizing treat curled slightly into a bow with golden tendrils spanning out into dozens of soft barbs. It very nearly seemed to flutter with the breeze flowing in through the window with how lifelike it appeared, though Willy knew this was impossible.
A feather. A simple creation when compared to the hundreds of wonders Willy had stocked his factory with, but its appeal was not held in its design. It was in what it could do.
He sat back in his chair, holding his chin as he stared at it. His leg jumped and jerked under the table in an unsteady, anxious rhythm. He and the feather held a silent staring contest as he debated adding finishing touches. Behind it sat several copies of the same chocolate in a pile—he always made sure to create back-ups. Perhaps he should add speckles to the top for realism, or splatter a black coating on the quill to appear as ink. None of this mattered, really. If he was being honest with himself, the chocolate had been finished thirty minutes ago and all of his tinkering and fussing was mere procrastination.
Willy wasn’t embarrassed. That was silly, after all, to be embarrassed of something that no one will see but you, that impacts no one but you. Not quite nervous, either. He had wanted to try creating something like this for a while now, even if the idea hadn’t quite formed into a coherent thought yet. He was excited about this. He wanted this. No, if he were to put it into words, it was a vague apprehension, a worry that it wouldn’t work, or worse, that it would work too well.
He tapped his fingers against the table. He leapt to his feet. He paced around several yard before whirling back to face the innocent feather.
“It’s just chocolate,” he muttered to himself. “Familiar territory.”
Before he could overthink it anymore, he snatched the treat and popped it into his mouth.
He rolled the chocolate around with his tongue. White chocolate, notes of hazelnut, all with a sweet vanilla glaze. It was, as always, delicious. He held it in the pocket of his cheek, allowing the warmth of his mouth to dissolve it.
Stalling.
Willy frowned, before determinedly swallowing it.
The effect was not instantaneous. He had made sure to calculate in a slight delay as there had been some fear of choking by accident. He was hyper aware of his own nervous system, unsure if what he was feeling was a tingling sensation or merely the butterflies swooping in his stomach.
Now that he had done it, worries began to flood Willy’s mind. He was alone, as he often was. There was Noodle and the rest of them, and the Oompa Loompas of course, but not here, not in his personal bedroom, not in his factory after hours. Sometimes they would stay late to finish up orders, and the Oompa Loompas slept here at the factory. If something had gone wrong, it would only be reasonable to get him. What if someone came in? What if it didn’t fade out in time? What if he had gotten the calculations wrong and it never wore off?
What if it was a dud and he was working himself up over nothing?
Just as he was about to go and check if the door was actually locked, however, Willy felt it. It was faint at first, a mere spark of something in his stomach. Soon, however, the spark multiplied until it was less of a spark and more of a crawling sensation over his lower abdomen, like spiders with feathers for legs.
“Oh. Oh.” A grin was breaking out across his features, his legs far less steady than they were mere moments before. He thought about making a break for the bed, but the sensation was only getting worse, and he found himself crumpling to the ground, arms wrapped protectively around his stomach.
It tickled. God, it tickled. More than he had anticipated, despite having created the recipe himself. It was spreading out from his stomach now and heading toward his sides. He dug beneath his coat, his own fingers gripping frantically at his undershirt in an unconscious effort to stop the feeling. Giggles welled up in his throat and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to keep them in. But it just wouldn’t stop. It was all just so intentional and teasing. Swipes up his sides, pokes at his ribs, fluttery fingers scuttling across his hips and down to his lower back. It was an overwhelming force of gentleness that he couldn’t fight off no matter how much he wanted to.
He knew logically that the chocolate was merely activating his nervous system and making his mind believe that it tickled when in actuality he was fine. One of the core ingredients to the chocolate was a rare hallucinogen he had found while out on his travels that was meant to interfere with one’s nervous system.
The idea for a tickling chocolate was one he had been working on for a while by then (secretly, of course, in the late hours of the night when the longing for it transferred into a desire so intense that he thought he might actually die if he didn't have it fulfilled), so when he stumbled across the plant, he knew immediately what to do.
He had tweaked it of course, taken out any dangerous elements, and only added in enough for about twenty minutes—nothing too crazy. So, rationally, he knew there was nothing really happening to him.
Still. It felt real.
Red crept up Willy's neck, tinging his ears as he twitched and jerked away from his invisible oppressors. It was a strange feeling, being tickled by one’s own mind—no pesky hands to fight off, no people to plead to. Just a grown man giggling to himself on his bedroom floor. And the only person he had to blame for this was himself. All of this was going on in his own mind, after all. As such, it was easy to convince himself that all he really needed to do to get it to stop was stop believing that it tickled at all—even if it was a goal that he hoped to fail at.
Willy forced his eyes open, taking deep, shuddering breaths. He glared firmly down at his own legs, holding the image of them in his mind. He could see nothing touching him, therefore there was nothing touching him. Thus, his mind had to be wrong in its attempts to convince Willy that something was squeezing devastating pinches higher and higher up his legs.
“It doesn’t tickle,” he gritted out, his wide grin saying otherwise. “It doesn’t… mmhmm… doesn’t tickle!”
Fingers crawling up toward his torso.
“Doesn’t—”
Scribbling over his stomach.
“Ti—”
Thumbs digging into his hips.
“—ihicKLE! Oh, what’s the pohohoint!” He doubled over at last, cackling wildly as he held his stomach. “Why does it hahave to tihickle so much!?” To who he was speaking, he couldn’t say, but some part of his mind was convinced that if he put the information out into the universe that maybe it would lend a helping hand. When that didn’t work, he attempted a more accepting method.
“N-now, now,” he assured himself, as though condoling a wailing child. “It’s just, ah, tihickling! Nothing t-to get so wohorked up about!” This was answered by several rapid-fire pokes to his ribs that sent him falling back and rolling about the floor. He knew it was impossible for the tickling to in any way be impacted by himself, as proven earlier, but it was starting to feel a tad bit personal as time went on.
Willy’s shoulders scrunched as soft touches flicked behind his ears, seeming to almost kiss his neck. He covered his face, groaning into his hands. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes. How was he going to survive the next fifteen?
Willy continued to lie there as he waited for the chocolate’s effects to wear off, squirming frantically in desperate mirth. What he didn’t see was the shadow of a man right outside his window that he had failed to notice in the excitement of his creation. They perched on the sill, observing him carefully until Willy’s laughter transformed into a few trickling giggles as the effects of the potion wore off.
They watched him as he carefully stood up, still a bit wobbly from the tickling, and walked over to lock up the remaining chocolates on the table in a little sealed jar that he shoved behind some books on his shelf.
It wasn’t until Willy had finally gone to bed that they emerged, shuffling carefully into the room and quietly sneaking over to the bookshelf. They scaled the wood paneling with ease, careful to make sure Willy was still out. The tickling had exhausted him, however, so it seemed, and so the man had no trouble sneaking behind the books and opening the little jar, sticking his orange hand inside.
The Oompa-Loompa smiled as he beheld the ornate sweet. It was true he was no longer conspiring against the chocolatier, but he hadn’t yet lost his penchant for mischief. Besides, it was just tickling—a harmless prank. He shoved the chocolate pieces into his pockets, quickly hopping down from the shelf and sneaking out the window before his plans could be ruined.
He held high hopes that this was going to be an eventful week.
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