This short story is an entry in the 2003 Soc.Sexuality.Spanking Summer Short Story Contest and is copyright by the author and commercial use is prohibited without permission. Personal/private copies are permitted only if complete including the copyright notice. The author would appreciate your comments
Category: Period
The Riddle of the Queen's Question
By
Starship <starship_64@yahoo.com>
A riddle has come down to us from times long ago, concerning an ancient king named Solomon, who was known far and wide as the wisest man on Earth. So great was his renown that even the queen of far off Sheba heard of Solomon's wisdom, and she traveled to Jerusalem with a great caravan to test the king with hard questions. She found to her amazement and pleasure that Solomon was indeed as wise as she had heard, and they spent many enjoyable days together entertaining each other with logic puzzles. Before long the two were spending their nights together as well, enjoying each other's bodies every bit as thoroughly as they had each other's minds.
One day, however, King Solomon returned from holding court to find the queen fondling his chief steward. Angered, Solomon grabbed her and dragged her into his royal bed chamber. The queen tried to apologize, stammering that nothing had happened between her and the steward, which was technically the truth thanks to the king's unexpected return. But the king's anger was not appeased. Taking a heavy leather belt from his wardrobe, he announced his intention to thrash the queen until her bottom was purple and her eyes were worn out from bawling.
The queen tried to escape the king's grasp, but Solomon easily overpowered her and pinned her face down across his knee. Her bottom was bared and the awful belt raised high. In desperation, the queen begged Solomon to put off whipping her long enough to truthfully answer a single question. Despite his anger, the king agreed. Before putting the question to him though, she begged Solomon to swear that he would not lie, so he raised his right hand and swore by Heaven and by the Almighty who rules it, and by his own kingship that he would answer her question truthfully. And after he had finished swearing this oath, the Queen of Sheba took a deep breath and asked her question.
When King Solomon heard the question, his face turned red and he ground his teeth in rage. For twenty minutes he sat, the queen still held pinned across his knee, puzzling over it. But logic and the king's own oath permitted only possible answer. Finally King Solomon bowed his head, although he was still angry, and answered, "Yes." Then he released the queen unpunished.
The riddle, then, is simply this: What was the question that forced King Solomon to release the Queen of Sheba from the well-deserved punishment he had planned for her?
The End
Click here for the author's answer to the riddle after the reviews.
© Copyright Starship, 21 August 2003
Reviews
Ted <quixotoes(at)aol(dot)com>
This period piece is exactingly written in a style that conjures other Solomonic tales, and the
author's use of language to pose this riddle is uncommonly good.
<justacatfish(at)aol(dot)com>
An interesting and tantalizing riddle. Now, why not just take this, rewrite it in a
standard short fiction format and develop it along those lines. Would make a good
story.
Don A. Landhill <dlandhill(at)aol(dot)com>
This is an interesting story, and an unusual format for a spanking story. But the
characters are a bit thin, due to the focus on the riddle. And the solution as given is
incorrect. Any negative answer other than "NO" (such as Not on your life) is
literally true if the queen is duly punished. This question only works if the king swears to
give a true YES or NO answer. Even if the question is re-worded to "Will you either give
a negative answer to this question or let me go unpunished?", an ambiguous answer such as "I
don't think so" or "I'm not sure" or "Only on the second Thursday of this week" allows the king to
inflict his just punishment, plus an extra for having tried to get out by extracting an oath under
false pretenses.
And given the king's literally Solomanic wisdom, in 20 minutes of tooth grinding he could probably invent the Theory of Types, declare that a question which was both self-referential and mixed entities of different types was meaningless, and that any answer at all was therefore truthful.
Anyway, thanks for a neat little brain-teaser of a spanking story.
Author's solution: The queen asked: "Will you either answer 'no' to this question or let me go unpunished?" The only possible truthful answer is yes and it is only true if the king does not punish her.