Once Upon A Time, The Confession

Every story has a beginning. At least that’s what we are all told. Once upon a time there was a girl who lost a glass slipper. A beast who imprisoned a beautiful girl. A wolf who huffed and puffed until three innocent little pigs had nowhere left to hide. We know these stories. We know who was good and who was evil. We know who deserved to be saved and who deserved to be punished. We know because someone told us, and when a story is told enough times, we stop questioning it. We stop wondering why the stepsisters wanted the slipper to fit so bad. Why the beast was locked away in a castle in the first place. Why the wolf was standing at the door. We are taught that there are heroes and villains. Princesses and monsters. Witches and fairies. However, stories are strange things, and they always depend on where you stand. That’s the dangerous thing about perspective, sometimes the truth doesn’t change. 

Sometimes, the story itself changes with them. There are places where reality is thin. Places where the old stories have been told so many times that the pages have begun to wear through. Where the wolf remembers knocking before he entered. Where the beast remembers the man, he used to be. And where, if you look closely enough, you may notice something strange. A detail that doesn’t belong. A sentence that wasn’t there before. A story that suddenly bends. Perhaps the fairy tales we grew up with were never lies. Perhaps they were simply told from the wrong side. But be careful what you believe. You have heard these stories many times before, you just haven’t heard them like this. This time, each story is told by the incarcerator themselves. Each individual charged with a different crime, all ready to tell what really happened that day from where they stood. This is the same story you’ve grown up with and became all too familiar with, only this time, it’s told from their point of view.