Week 4 Storytelling: The Sociopaths Next Door

Salina was a horrible woman.  She was a liar and a manipulator and she was quite skilled at both of them.  She despised everyone except for her son, Fasa, whom she groomed to be just like her.  Although she despised everyone, she had to pretend to like people in order to get them close and to use them.  Her husband, Chuck, was stuck between a rock and a hard place.  He was married to a horrible, lying woman, but she was his wife.  One day, a neighbor, Jessica, dared to disagree with Salina regarding the deviant actions of her son.  Fasa had been on the property attempting to destroy private property and Jessica merely wished for Fasa to stay away from the property.  Salina was so enraged that anyone would call her, or her son, out on their behavior and lies that she turned Jessica into the liar and manipulator by spreading lies throughout the small town.  It got to the point that no one in the small town would talk to Jessica, as Salina had skillfully and industriously changed the events of the story to benefit her own malicious intentions.  One day; however, someone else in the town caught Salina in a lie and began to question all the other "facts" that had been given to her.  This occurred again with another local, until the entire town began to realize that it was not Jessica who was malicious and evil, but Salina.  Finally, Salina got what was coming to her.  She lost her place on the town council and the entire town ostracized Salina as the "True Liar."

Author's Note:
I was retelling the story of The Story of the First Old Man and of the Hind from the Arabian Nights' story of Scheherazade.  In The Story of the First Old Man and of the Hind, a man was manipulated by his wife.  The husband adored a slave boy so much that he raised him as his own.  The wife was extremely jealous of the slave boy and his mother, so much so that she turned them both into cows.  The husband ordered a cow to be brought for slaughter for the meal & unbeknownst to him, he would be killing his son or his son's mother.  This is how incredibly treacherous the wife was.  Luckily, someone informed the husband of his wife's treachery and the son was spared.  But, as punishment his wife was turned into a hind (a deer).  I switched this story around by having the treacherous Salina metaphorically turn Jessica into a liar, when in fact it was Salina who was the liar.  I thought a metaphor instead of real witchcraft might work for this story.

Above - Fallow Deer Buck
Below - Calf & Cow

Bibliography:
The Story of the First Old Man and of the Hind.  Web Source: The Hind
Image: The Calf and the Cow.  Web Source: Calf&Cow
Image: Fallow Deer Buck.  Web Source: Deer (Hind)