Millersville's Daughters

Happy Birthday to L.C. Schäfer. You challenged me to go a bit darker than I typically do with your Fucked Up Fairytales unofficial challenge. I'm not going to name the fable, it's pretty obvious. If you ignore this preface, I also managed to come in at exactly 366 words, as requested.

Cheers.

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The plan to put an end to the Daughters of Millersville, to see the Prince brought to justice, had been slow and methodical. Then my sister got pregnant and everything changed.

My twin sister, Asha, and I were raised in the fabled Millersville palace. Our community called ourselves The Kin and our leader was the Prince. Our primitive life included straw beds, handspun clothing, courtyard farms and livestock.

But fables are unkind to those not classically beautiful. For me, it meant being kicked out of the community at fourteen. The Prince felt my dwarfism marred the illusion of perfection. Nobody trusted a tiny man. But it gave me the perspective to see chasms in the façade.

Our primitive castle had computer rooms and surveillance cameras that monitored every angle of the castle, except for the tower. Here, the Daughters of Millersville, dressed as princesses, were sold by the hour- a spin on a straw bed in exchange for crypto gold. Everyone outside called it a brothel cult.

Daughters were raised as men’s property- the tower was like sending a princess to marry an enemy for peacemaking. Asha’s room was at the top of this tower, by the dovecote. We had cared for the birds, knew how to use them to pass messages. I told Asha of an outside world with real choices. She became a whistleblower as the authorities built their case.

Asha collected women’s stories and documented evidence, but needed the final piece of the puzzle. She knew where the crypto wallet was, but we needed a 12-digit password to unlock it. She knew it was the family name of the founding Kin, but the historical records were locked in the Prince’s rooms. Her pregnancy proved to be the key.

Until a Daughter became old/ugly, her babies were sold and she was returned to the tower. The sale took place in the Prince’s chambers. Once the purchase was completed, the woman was kept isolated here until delivery.

The day Asha’s firstborn baby was born, a dove arrived with a thumb drive and note tied to its leg. An operative opened the crypto wallet, typed in the password:

R-U-M-P-L-E-S-T-I-L-T-S

The wallet opened. The feds moved in.

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