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
