Battle plan

Ticklish? Inigo exploded angrily. Ticklish!
Life and death are all around and you talk ticklish!

Don’t you yell at me, Max exploded right back,
and don’t you mock my methods –
tickling can be terrific in the proper instances.
I had a corpse once, worse than this fella, mostly dead he was,
and I tickled him and tickled him;
I tickled his toes and I tickled his armpits and his ribs
and I got a peacock feather and went after his bellybutton;
I worked all day and I worked all night and the following dawn –
the following dawn, mark me –
this corpse said, “I just hate that,”
and I said, “Hate what?”
and he said, “Being tickled;
I’ve come all the way back from the dead to ask you to stop,”
and I said, “You mean this that I’m doing now
with the peacock feather, it bothers you?”
and he said, “You couldn’t guess how much it bothers me,”  

and of course I just kept on asking him questions about tickling,
making him talk back to me, answer me,
because I don’t have to tell you,
once you get a corpse really caught up in conversation,
your battle’s half over.

                      William Goldman, The Princess Bride