Girl Scout Cookies (Revised chapter 1)

[EddieDavidson]

https://storiesonline.net/n/43683/girl- ... by-eddie/1

I've posted up the edited version here.

[EddieDavidson]

[EddieDavidson]

This is an excerpt from part two -rewrite. IDC if it doesn't really fit. I enjoyed writing it. I meant to write it much shorter, but I just kept going.

It's a lesson they tell in this alternate reality.

The Tale Of the Prodigal Daughter: Skubalon from the House of Malakos

There are privileged women that are spoiled by their indulgent fathers and husbands. I grew up hearing the parable about the prodigal daughter Skubalon.

A devoted father named Malakos lavished his daughter with wealth and freedom. He treated her with the same trust he gave his sons—but made her do nothing in return for his gifts.

Each time she got what she wanted, she wanted more. Her father wanted to please his demanding daughter and eventually started taking from his sons to grant her wishes, thinking it would satisfy her.

It didn’t. Once she got even more of what she wanted, she didn’t want it anymore. She wanted something else. If she wanted a garden with roses, fountains, and fruit trees, he’d have the finest gardeners tend it for her. Once she tired of it, she wanted it all uprooted and replaced with a marble plaza, golden statues, exotic birds, and entertainers for her amusement.

Skubalon was fair in her youth. She was certainly not the most attractive of all women in the city. She insisted that her father buy her the most expensive silks, jewelry and vanity to compensate so that she could consider herself the fairest of all women.

There was a young serving girl in her father’s villa who was naturally beautiful. She insisted the girl be disfigured so that she would not have anyone who rivalled her. The father begged for mercy for the girl but his daughter would not abide that.

Malakos controlled the central market of the city, with a reputation for fair dealings with traders. Skubalon’s father had the serving girl sold to a passing trader to save her from his daughter’s wrath.

His daughter said she would not forgive him for defying her, and her wailing lasted seven days and seven nights until Malakos agreed to give her an inheritance greater than all of his sons and wife combined.

She was so bitter, so demanding, so cruel that no man wanted to marry her for any dowry despite her beauty. Skubalon was her father’s only daughter, and he wanted her happiness above all else. If he did not make her happy, she would cry false tears and scream in rage until he gave into her selfish demands.

Skubalon’s talent as a singer and dancer was so poor, that Malakos had to hire poor workers to praise her grace, poise, and beauty. Any endeavor that she pursued, Malakos made sure that someone was there to say it was the most extraordinary treasure.

Malakos funded great expeditions for his daughter to travel the world. When she bored of the travel between cities – he paid to have replicas of ancient wonders constructed outside his villa for her amusement.

There was nothing that could satisfy the prodigal daughter, but her devoted father tried anyway until he finally passed away. When he died, she was too busy with extravagant feasts to attend his ceremony.

Skubalon demanded her share of the inheritance from her mother, and when that was not enough to sustain her luxurious lifestyle, she demanded her mother’s share as well. If she didn’t get what she wanted, she threw a tantrum so great that it shook the very foundation of her father’s home. She left her mother and the rest of the family destitute.

The House of Malakos crumbled and would be remembered for all time as morally weak and associated with the worst traits of fathers and daughters. The sons of Malakos were too poor to stop her and too afraid to prevent her from seizing their father’s wealthy businesses. She insisted on raising the prices in the market and had a great throne built in the center of the market where she could sit and lord over others like a Pharaoh.

She demanded samples of the finest perfumes and sweetmeats for the simple favor of being permitted to trade in the City Market. She forbade anyone in the city from using the central well in the marketplace and instead made them trudge outside the city to bring water back in buckets.

The prodigal daughter could not abide any other woman in the city who was more attractive, graceful, or talented, so she had them enslaved and sold—even her own mother and the wives of her brothers. She ended the line of her father as she would not procreate, and her sons were too poor to buy their wives out of bondage.

She manipulated the magistrate to arrest any of her brothers who tried to oppose her will. Skubalon did not care that her line would end with her – she only thought of herself and today.

There was no profit to be had from her tyrannical behavior. It was all to satisfy her pride and vanity. Traders ceased crossing the desert to bring their goods to the market as word of her wicked deeds grew. People grew hungry while she held gluttonous feasts for herself and sycophants who told her how remarkable her skill as a merchant truly was. She manipulated even the most loyal servants until they deserted her.

The House of Malakos fell from grace, but she still had modest wealth at her father’s villa and could have lived out her days in comfort by retiring from the market and living a quiet life out of the public eye. This would not satisfy Skubalon.

Her beautiful, youthful looks were fading, and her decadent perversions and desires were greater than before. The most exotic entertainment and delicacies bored her – she would have anyone who brought her anything less than the most unique treats flogged for daring to waste her time.

Instead of investing that wealth, she spent it on even more extravagance and frivolous desires, throwing great orgies to satisfy her lust—but nothing could satiate the insatiable. She had her throne embellished with the deeds of legendary heroes that she claimed to have done herself.

Skubalon had her father’s once-thriving businesses and home torn down and sold to pay for her excesses. She was cruel to her workers and forced the people to starve while working harder to support her until even those thriving businesses failed due to her inability to be a good steward.

Once that was gone, she demanded the Pharisees make the moneylenders fund her lifestyle. They would not give in to her demands and threats. With nothing left, she was helpless—unskilled, undisciplined. She had never learned to work a day in her life. She could have sold her remaining jewelry to live a modest life, but she refused—unable to part with the silver that the prodigal daughter coveted.

The Pharisees returned the central well and the market to the people, and there was much rejoicing, but Skubalon vowed petty vengeance. She defied even the lawmakers thinking that no one would dare stand up to her wrath.

The prodigal daughter’s delicate hands could not hold tools; she was not even a skilled whore because she had only learned to pleasure herself and no one else. Skubalon was sour-tongued and cruel to everyone until even her family turned their backs on her, and no one would take her in.

The Pharisees, taking the prodigal daughter as a cautionary tale, enslaved her. She was useless at labor, requiring constant correction, and soon proved more trouble than she was worth. They kept her nude, and rather than sell her remaining jewelry to pay her debts, they had it melted. The finest craftsmen made shackles and a collar for her neck to bind her.

They attached silver bells to her saggy breasts and pussy lips so that she would jingle as she approached. This way, the people knew she was coming and could ridicule her and throw mud and rotten vegetables at her. They made her a jester to dance obscenely and forced her to sit upon long metal poles so that she would not wriggle while the people teased and mocked her.

Skubalon was too proud and stubborn to find shame in it. She demanded they release her and refused to obey even when whipped. She had grown accustomed through decadent sexual pleasures to pain and laughed at the overseer.

The Pharisees could not allow her continued defiance and could find nothing of value in this once beautiful woman – whose beauty was fading with age. She could not even keep the treasure of a comely appearance that she was born with.

She could do nothing and was worth nothing other than to be a warning to others about the natural excess of women when given too much freedom and privilege. They locked her in a wooden pillory in the market square where her extravagant throne pavilion once proudly stood as a symbol to excess, cruelty and luxury.

A carver fashioned a penis-shaped stone from the foundation stone of her father’s house and inserted it in her ass during the day. The shadow the stone cast on the ground was used to tell time based on the position of the sun.

The bells attached to her body became a twisted hymn of her shame, their silver chime when the desert wind made them jingle made her seem like a living statue of shame.

During the day, old women would sit and tell tales of Skubalon’s humiliating failures to the younglings who gathered to laugh and ridicule her. The old women made parody of the false triumphs and victories that Skubalon once bragged about in golden effigies on the cushioned throne she once sat upon. They made up stories of her decadence and excess to humiliate her, but Skubalon remained proud and stubborn.

The people dug a smaller well around her in the marketplace that was not connected to the central water supply. They bound her with rope and lowered her naked body slowly into the well each night, and rather than drink from the well, the people who once served her used it to empty their refuse and chamber pots.

She continued to threaten and complain and refused to accept the shame that she deserved. She blamed her long-dead father, Malakos, her mother and brothers. Skubalon condemned her servants for turning upon her after she abused and cruelly tricked them for years. She blamed the Pharisees for holding her to account and not lending her money to continue her excess. Skubalon accused the traders for refusing to trade with an unethical market. She even blamed the goats whose semen, urine and milk were used to make a paste the people fed her to amuse themselves.

She blamed everyone and anyone who was not named Skubalon.

One day, the young servant girl who her father had sold into slavery to save her from Skubalon returned to the city. She was the wise and obedient wife of a Roman Noble who had come to trade in the city. She visited Skubalon and offered her forgiveness, for despite a harsh life, she had endured and learned patience and quiet strength.

The servant girl offered to seek mercy for Skubalon and ask her husband to negotiate her release from bondage. All she asked was that Skubalon agree to hold her tongue, and be grateful to her husband.

Skubalon was unable to accept her former servant’s forgiveness or pity. She lashed out and mocked the servant girl for not being vindictive. “If I were in your place, I would have you mounted by Roman horses and finish the job to end your beauty that my father was too cowardly to do.”

The servant girl could not understand the bitterness that would drive someone such as Skubalon to refuse aid or mercy for fear of being pitied. The Roman noble did not abide the insult to his wife, and to silence her bitching, he commissioned a unique silver gag to be created. Instead of speech, nothing but the most beautiful birdsong could be heard when Skubalon tried to speak. The prodigal daughter spent her remaining years in constant humiliation as a lesson for all women who might think to follow her path.

Skubalon was unable to escape the cruel taunts and filth thrown at her, used as a sun clock during the day and dunked in well at night by the city she once ruled through her wealth and connections. Her beauty faded, her wealth was ash, her father’s legacy destroyed, and all to satisfy vanity and desires that could never be satisfied. She was left with nothing but the legacy of humiliation and shame.

[EddieDavidson]