Chapter 4: The Scarecrow

During the summer of the year before Cookie started Junior High School, things began to change for her in ways that she couldn't control.

Seemingly overnight she became taller and, with that, more clumsy in her movements and prone to accidentally knocking things over which, in her case, could lead to a severe punishment. Her clothes, worn and misfitting as they were, became almost grotesque, on her, as her body swelled in places and she grew out of them. The normally sunny disposition, she tried to maintain, was challenged by the nagging discomfort of the suddenly enlarging nipples, on her swelling chest, which constantly itched and made their presence known as they chafed against the threadbare material of her tops.

As the days rolled by, her father became even more menacing toward her (if that were even possible) and she made an effort to try and stay on his good side or avoid him as much as she could.

But she couldn't.

"Look at you," he told her as she made ready to tend to the flowers that she had planted, in colorful beds, on either side of the walkway leading to the front porch. "You look like a crappy rag bag, all the time, and I'm sick of it!"

"I'm sorry, Poppa" she told him meekly. Poppa being the only name he allowed her to address him as, stating that he didn't want to ever hear her call him Father or Dad or (even worse) Daddy. Poppa seemed to have a detached, old-world, authoritarian air to it that he rather liked.

"Get your ass over here," he barked, standing from the recliner and tossing the golf magazine, he'd been reading, to the armrest.

Cookie instantly obeyed his command, stooping to set her gloves and the flower pot on the living room floor and then hastily standing before him.

Cookie's father was a big man, a former linebacker at Central Michigan. He was tall and wide with thick upper arms and short, straw colored hair and a thick mustache over his now leering lips and menacing steel-blue eyes. His face could brighten into a warm, wide, Irish smile for family, friends and strangers but never for this miserable daughter.

"What are you wearing?" he demanded, reaching to pull on the sleeve of the thread-worn denim jumper she wore over a ragged, pink, plaid, short-sleeve shirt.

"It's just something to work out in the garden in," she stated, the outfit being nothing out of the ordinary for her.

"Get in the den," her father ordered. The "den" being where he worked when home and where most of Cookie's more extreme punishments were meted out to her.

Her heart pounding, Cookie led the way to the room where her father kept such things as belts, leather straps, ropes, pliers, lighters, pins and other fearful implements that could be (and had been) used to hurt her so very badly.

Slamming the door behind him, her father stood before her trembling form and barked, "Take those clothes off!"

Cookie quickly pulled the jumper down her shoulders and let it fall to the floor and then unbuttoned her shirt and pulled it quickly off. She now stood there in just her worn and pinned up panties, goose-bumps of fear appearing along her naked back and arms and around the thick, swelling nipples of her bare chest.

"Those too," he ordered, pointing at her ragged underpants.

Cookie quickly pulled them down and bent to remove them from around her feet. Standing now, she bowed her head and draped her forearm over her chest and placed the open hand, of her other arm, over her crotch.