Prologue.
Originally posted 6th May 2012. Re-uploaded 1st June 2012.
AN: This is a repost of the story Beauty and the Bitch, which was taken down by site admin a few days ago for having a non-G-rated title/summary. To anyone who was offended or inconvenienced by this, I apologise.
This story is rated T throughout for minor swears and references.
Once upon a time in Lima, Ohio, a kingdom falls into disrepair. The ruler is deposed; the inhabitants flee and those who remain are cursed, leaving them powerless to escape. For years they are trapped, frozen in time, waiting for someone bold enough to break the enchantment on their magical prison and set them free.
Lima isn't the idyllic, quaint sort of place you associate with fairytales. The town's inhabitants are more likely to vandalise a castle than explore it, so it's almost miraculous that the McKinley ruin has survived mostly untouched.
No-one is quite sure how it came to exist. So many rumours have built up around the place that it is almost impossible to separate the truth from the fiction any more. The one common element of the tales parents tell their wide-eyed children as they drive past is that the dilapidated buildings were once part of a school. The William McKinley High School, they recite dramatically to their eager audience, the name somehow embedded firmly in their minds despite the haziness of the other details.
Beyond that, what happened is anyone's guess. Some say an earthquake struck in the middle of a busy lunch-break, and the ruins were left as a memorial to the students and teachers killed in the tragedy. Others allege in a fit of uncontrollable fury, the school's cheerleading coach took a jackhammer to the school's foundations and damaged the place beyond repair. According to a few, a wicked witch had put a curse on the whole institution, destroying the buildings and enslaving the occupants.
But none of that could ever be true. There haven't been any earthquakes of that magnitude in Lima in living memory and there's no way that anyone, not even a national championship winning cheerleading coach, would be able to get away with that sort of atrocity. And everyone knows there's no such thing as magic.
Maybe if it was somewhere other than the middle of Ohio, the McKinley ruin would be something of a tourist attraction. A real-life fairytale, if you will. As it is, it became something of a folk legend to the people of Lima.
The wide-eyed children grow up, grow into surly adolescents too old for fairy stories and make believe. When it is their own turn to attend high school, they flock to the comprehensive school across town in Lima Heights. They get involved in schoolwork and friends and parties, and gradually the stories of their childhood fade into obscurity. They graduate and have children of their own, and the story is revived, and the cycle continues.
Occasionally someone brings it up in passing. Oh yeah, that McKinley place. Wonder what happened. It'd be a mad place to crash. Every now and some teenager, egged on by their laughing and hooting friends, will try to scale the walls and see what lies inside. None of them make it. Maybe it's because they're too drunk or high to achieve co-ordinated movement. Maybe there's something else to it. Eventually, they give up. Eventually, they forget. Everyone does.
Everyone except for Brittany.
Brittany, the poor dear, has always been a little odd. Or so her mothers' friends whisper to each other when they think she can't hear them. (Brittany hears everything). The poor, sweet, simple child. (She's not as dumb as they think she is). Caught up in her fairytale world, she and her cat. (Lord Tubbington never talks about her like that). Let her pretend. Let her dream. (She knows this is real).
Brittany never stopped believing.
And one day, she promises herself, she will find out the truth about McKinley.
Just a small-town girl who owns neither Glee nor Beauty and the Beast. I hope to have the previously-posted chapters reuploaded within the next few days; in the meantime, sorry for the delay. Feedback is, as always, appreciated. Thanks for reading (: