A/N: Holy frijoles guys, I'm SO excited about this one! I've been ridiculously obsessed with it in the last few months of its existence and you know what that means: prolific writing and even more prolific drawing. Oy! It's still not finished yet, but a good amount of it is done, so it's posting should be moderately regular.

Just let it be known that it is a modern retelling of the old faerie tale Beauty and the Beast but definitely has its own flair.
So please enjoy and let me know what you think!

Beatty & The Beast
by JD Allen

- Prologue -
Where the Beauty feels compassion

Late August

He greeted his first day of his senior year of high school like he did any other first day of school: with a bleary head and a heart in mourning of a summer vacation that ended entirely too soon. Indifferent to the fact that it marked the beginning of the end of his high school career, Keefe Beatty would’ve preferred it being the end of the end of his high school career, but he supposed the upcoming months would have to run their course at their own pace and he, a slave to time, would have to follow it accordingly.

He could at least comfort himself with the fact that it would be his last first day of school in the rural town of Villeneuve, or, at least, would hopefully be his last, if everything went according to his big bad plan of escape. A plan he had dreamed about, worked and planned for for some years now. A plan he didn’t intend to see fall through because, if it did, life as he knew it would essentially be finito.

But at the moment, being knee-deep in summer-is-over depression, he didn’t want to think about the possibility of his life being finito, so he pushed the idea from his head, opting to think of brighter things… if such things exist on the first of day of school.

Life in Villeneuve basically equated to a life of routine, where change was a bad word and familiarity was like oxygen: necessary for life. This mundane attempt at living the safe country life was forced vigorously upon the inhabitants of town and one wasn’t looked upon with much favor if they tried to “mix it up.”

So, keeping to the routine, Keefe Beatty walked the 1.3 miles to school like he had done every day since the second grade when he moved to this time warp known as Villeneuve. And, like every day since the second grade, he was accompanied by a small group of classmates that happened to live nearby. They, like most of the teens in town, lacked the means of vehicular transport and so were forced to reach school on foot.

(Keefe, who possessed vehicular transport but preferred keeping the air clean, just felt it was his duty to the earth to walk.)

He wouldn’t necessarily call them his friends – the above mentioned small group of classmates that is - they were more like acquaintances, even if he had known them for nearly ten years. They only walked together because it seemed silly to walk in the same path with the same destination and not acknowledge the others’ presence. So they conversed every day to and from school, sometimes offering a greeting in the hallways or occasionally sitting next to each other in classes they shared, but never giving much more. Their acquaintance was born of habit and never extended beyond the hours related to school, thus keeping them from ever reaching the bond of friendship.

But this was normal and not at all sad for someone like Keefe Beatty. He wasn’t one to have friends, nor was he one to really look for them among the students of Villeneuve High, but instead was content in being a loner. Since he had no plans of shooting up the school nor did he harbor a habit of torturing small animals or writing wrist-slashing poetry, Keefe figured it was okay to be a bit alienated from his peers. He didn’t hate them, disrespect them, ignore them, or wish any harm to them or any of the townsfolk, he was just the epitome of the square peg in the round hole called Villeneuve, thus being a loner was almost a given. So, as far as he was concerned, there was no harm in being his own island and, judging by how the town worked and how he and his family were sometimes looked upon, it was pretty easy to remain a one-man army.

Though he was essentially unaware of it, there were three reasons why Keefe Beatty was held at any esteem by the folk of Villeneuve – for they did think of him fondly, they just thought of him as a bit of an offbeat – and those reasons were these:

1. He was a very smart and very dedicated student with very commendable grades to prove it.

2. Out of a family that was known for having useless slackers as brothers and a highly misguided joke of a father, Keefe seemed to be the only one with any drive to make something of himself.

3. He was probably the most beautiful boy anyone in town had ever beheld; with a beauty so entrancing, so flawless and so unassuming that many thought of him as Villeneuve’s modern and earthbound version of Adonis…no joke.

But as smart and driven and gorgeous as he was, Keefe still moved to the beat of his own drum, a beat the townsfolk just couldn’t get into and was what kept the chasm between him and everyone else open and wide.

He and his “walking to school acquaintances” (or his “WaTSAs” as he commonly called them) were just trudging up the steep Beaumont Hill, the halfway mark between home and school, when Enid, the only female in the WaTSA group, decided to commandeer the conversation.

“Let’s cross the street, I don’t want to go anywhere near the Whistlebeck loon’s house,” she eyed the ramshackle mansion on the top of the hill warily as it steadily came into their view. Ever since the crew had begun walking as one, Enid insisted they steer clear of the Whistlebeck estate, never able to get past the persistent superstitions planted in her thanks to the millions of rumors involving the mansion.

Not much was really known about old man Whistlebeck - since he was a serial hermit and thus never seemed to leave the house - except for that he was once a very successful and respected brain surgeon back in the day, garnering an astounding amount of wealth along with what most of the Villeneuve folk called “work-related lunacy.” Apparently disenchanted with the field, he retired early and bought the decaying mansion on Beaumont Hill – the only house on this particular street - about twenty years back, never leaving the property again (as far as the townspeople saw anyway) and only coming out of the house at night when he wouldn’t risk being seen.

What went on inside the house was hard to say, but outside soon became the stuff of local fame and lore. For Dr. Whistlebeck, along with being a recluse and a bit off his rocker, was also an avid collector of odd – and usually very large – objects. These objects soon took up residence on his grounds, surrounding his mansion and going on display for the whole town to see. There were old neon signs from demolished Las Vegas casinos propped up along the overgrown grass, thousands of statues of varying subjects and stories popping up haphazardly like marble weeds, a piece of a space shuttle he bought from NASA remodeled to hold his precious rose garden, a locomotive from the late 1800s running along the backyard and a life-sized skeleton of a Brontosaurus constructed entirely of discarded U.S. Army helmets from the 1970s (created by an artist who lived in Utah) towering just barely above his three-story mansion.

And this was just to name a few of his collectibles, for he had thousands more just as crazy filling up his ill-tended grounds (and most likely the inside of his dilapidated mansion.) It was this obsessive hobby of his, coupled with his anti-social behavior, that only cemented his reputation as the town nut job. As was customary when an old recluse decided to live in a weird old house in a town too small for its own good, rumors, speculations and unnecessary fears about Whistlebeck flourished throughout Villeneuve like a well-fed rosebush.

The old man’s behavior was strange perhaps but understandable to Keefe, who always thought immensely intelligent people had a natural tendency toward eccentricity. (There was only so much a human brain can handle after all and once it was filled with massive intellect, there couldn’t be much room for common sense or normality, in his opinion.) Plus, he couldn’t help but be fascinated by Whistlebeck’s collection and actually took joy in passing the rundown house, when most avoided it at all cause.

As the others crossed the street with Enid, Keefe kept on the same side, looking over the graveyard of oddities and keeping a smile on his face. The others – who along with Enid included two guys named Chris and Lewis respectively – merely rolled their eyes at Keefe and what they thought was his morbid obsession with the town loon.

Once past Whistlebeck’s and back to being on the same side of the street, Enid decided to move on to bigger and better things. She was one of those small, homely and chubby creatures that always seemed to be bursting with energy and in turn didn’t have much patience, got bored easily and felt like she had to overcompensate for her unfortunate physical attributes. Soon, she was pulling a gossip magazine out of her backpack and scanning through it, looking for celebrities she could scoff at.

Being she had never been one and thus felt threatened by them, Enid had a big problem with the beautiful and the rich, thinking they were essentially the scourge of the earth and the reason why modern culture was going down the tubes. Thus she made a habitual practice of subscribing to tabloid magazines for the mere purpose of finding further proof that celebrities were nothing but vapid creeps that didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as cockroaches.

Batting compulsively as her long, frizzy brown hair, Enid adjusted her glasses and narrowed her flint-like eyes to find her next victim, virtually ignoring the guys in doing so. The guys, who were used to this, didn’t think much of it and Chris and Lewis soon fell into their own conversation, leaving Keefe to his thoughts.

Where Enid was one to have a combative nature, Chris and Lewis were ones to have a more submissive one. Chris, who was good-looking, well-liked and generally well-rounded, was one who didn’t like to make trouble and thus had a habit of following the crowd’s lead. If his peers insisted the new “in” fashion was wearing bright pink fishnet stockings with bowling shoes, Chris would probably show up the next day in just that. He knew he was relatively popular and had worked hard to get where he was in the social hierarchy of Villeneuve High and so he did whatever he could to fulfill the status quo and remain as close to the top as he could.

With Lewis (who was not as attractive nor as well-liked as Chris and thus felt honored to be considered his friend and would do anything to remain so) it was given that anything Chris did was the thing to do. Lewis was so desperate to be accepted he essentially became the human lemming, Chris’ shadow, and, as a consequence, seemed to lose any and all of his own character and personality. In a sense, he wasn’t Lewis anymore; he was more a mini-Chris, no longer a unique being, just a clone.

It was their insistence on following the crowd that inevitably kept Keefe from ever feeling close to Chris and Lewis. They were nice guys who were relatively easy to talk to, but Keefe knew he could never really be friends with them. And Chris and Lewis, in turn, knew they could never be friends with Keefe. He was just a little too weird, had too many odd ideas, wore too many bizarre things, and said too many strange things for them to accept him completely. It was an unspoken but accepted sentiment between the two parties that real friendship would never be made between them, and neither of them fought against it.

“Oh my God, I forgot about her!” Enid’s voice suddenly called out, snatching Chris and Lewis from their conversation and stealing Keefe from his random thoughts.

“Who?” Chris asked.

“Remember Andréa Donovan? That prissy little ‘tween bitch who got in that big accident a few years back?” Enid said, as a hint of sadistic glee sparkled in her small eyes.

“The one who was set on fire by some crazed fan?” Chris said.

“Yeah, that one,” Enid replied excitedly, “well, apparently, for the last, like, two years she’s been in and out of hospitals and rehab centers, having surgeries and skin grafts and what not and is, according to this article, finally being fully released and attempting to live a normal life.”

Enid’s voice was anything but sympathetic and it was obvious she had found her source of happiness for the day.

It took a bit of pondering for Keefe to remember this accident Enid was speaking of, since he wasn’t one to keep up with entertainment news – or any news that didn’t involve the environment for that matter – but he did remember hearing about this particularly gruesome incident. Though her people kept most of the details under wraps, what was known was that beautiful Andréa Donovan, a famed and troubled TV starlet, was fifteen when she got drunk, was lured away from the party she was attending by a mentally-unstable fan, was doused in gasoline and then promptly set on fire. The full report of the damages was never released, though it was said she suffered from second and third degree burns and had been “heavily disfigured” by them. She soon dropped off the radar, being locked up in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, and shunning any and all publicity. Once the shock from the accident passed and other celebrity follies took precedence, she was all but forgotten for the next two years.

Until now, Keefe realized.

“God, it’s like a Where Are They Now? moment. They’ve got a whole article on her, like they didn’t cry and moan about her misfortune when it first happened, the enabling idiots,” Enid sighed, disgusted, but kept on reading the article, even going so far as to read bits out loud.

“Donovan, who became a household name among teens and tweens alike thanks to many roles in Disney Channel movies and shows,” Enid read in a mockingly sharp tone, “soon gained more infamy than fame for her less than squeaky-clean off-camera antics, destructive lifestyle and self-absorbed personality. Remember the time she was caught driving drunk though she was only fourteen at the time and thus well below the drinking age and driving age limits? Neither have we.”

“Yep, she was a winner,” Chris grunted.

“And let’s not forget,” Enid held up a finger, still reading the article, “her notorious appearance on Dateline where she blatantly admitted to Diane Sawyer that people had always been jealous of her because of her beautiful looks and she wished they would just ‘get over themselves.’ This was also the interview where she admitted that she first tried cocaine at the tender age of thirteen, the same year she also allegedly lost her virginity.”

Chris and Lewis grimaced, looking thoroughly disgusted.

“God, she must be crawling with STDs,” Chris shuddered and Lewis agreed.

Anybody who had sex before marriage, according to most in Villeneuve, was most likely crawling with STDs, it was just that simple. Biting his tongue, Keefe just stuck his hands into his jean pockets, remaining quiet for one of those rare moments in his life. He wanted to hear the rest of the story.

“This move was what prompted Disney executives to drop Donovan from any future projects and what began her slow and steady black-listing among Hollywood moviemakers. When asked how she felt about being dropped by Disney, Donovan retorted that it was ‘their loss,’ she didn’t need ‘that channel and their wholesome bulls-t’ and that they’d regret it once they realized ‘how irreplaceable’ she was,” Enid snarled as she read, making herself look very unattractive indeed.

Obviously too repulsed to read more about how Andréa Donovan thought she was God’s gift to the world, Enid soon moved onto the next paragraph.

“The accident came at a time where Donovan’s career seemed to be at a stand still, thanks to her tendency toward vicious tantrums that caused many directors and producers to refuse to work with a person one source referred to as ‘caustic, flighty, conceited, unprofessional and deeply troubled.’” Enid shook her head, skimming over parts she deemed unimportant and finally reaching the end of the article. “Sources close to the actress say she will be released from the hospital within the week and will be moved to an undisclosed location to try and ‘put her shattered life back together.’”

Enid then snorted, folded the magazine in half and shoved it into her backpack without care, “Such crap. Such vapid, brainless crap. Why do they even bother writing about her? She was nothing but a talent-less ho that everybody soon forgot about. I mean, she made Tara Reid and Paris Hilton look like tame and humble church girls for God’s sake, and she’s half their age! Who cares about a narcissistic creep like her?”

“Obviously you do since you just spent the last ten minutes reading the article out loud to us,” Keefe piped in smoothly, “never mind the fact you bought that ‘vapid, brainless crap’ of a magazine in the first place.”

Enid shot him a narrowed look, growing red around her ears and temples all while Chris and Lewis kept quiet, fearing her wrath though they were both over a foot taller than her.

“They wouldn’t write it if they thought it wouldn’t sell,” Keefe reasoned.

“Whatever,” Enid scowled, looking away from Keefe and upping her pace. “All I can say is that tramp deserved what she got.”

Keefe was a bit horrified when Chris and Lewis agreed with Enid’s harsh sentiments.

“Because she made some bad choices she deserved to be burnt to a crisp by a psychopath?” Keefe said, turning his aqua blue eyes to every one of his WaTSAs.

“That’s pretty brutal, E,” he added.

“Bad choices? She’s been nothing but a spoiled, slutty, careless and dumb brat since she gained fame. How can you call all of this shit I just relayed to you ‘bad choices’?” Enid spat.

“Very easily, obviously, since I just did,” Keefe shrugged easily. “Half of that ‘shit’ she did she did when she was what, thirteen? How many people are smart when they’re thirteen? Seriously,” he cracked.

But the others didn’t seem to be amused, especially Enid. She sometimes reminded Keefe of an irritated porcupine. All she needed was a little nudge and her quills were out and up, ready and on the defensive.

“She’s an idiot, plain and simple,” Enid stated, always one to want the end-all of statements, the king of the last word. “An idiot slut who now can’t depend on her looks to get her places. Boohoo, poor baby,” she said dully.

She was still red around the ears, a telltale sign she was more frustrated with the topic than she was letting on and announcing that she was dangerously close to exploding. Though Keefe wasn’t one to shy away from picking at ticking time bombs, at this moment he didn’t really want to get into it. Once again, he just had to tell himself to agree to disagree with the WaTSAs, since he rarely agreed with them on any topic anyway.

So was the story of his life.

Keefe kept to himself after that, as the others talked about other things. During the rest of the trek to school, his mind didn’t wander far from the tragic saga that was the life of Andréa Donovan. He wondered how it must’ve felt to be up so high only to fall so spectacularly low at such a young age. How must it have felt to lose so much, to deal with so much, and not yet be eighteen?

Though he didn’t know her, and most assuredly never would, Keefe couldn’t help but feel badly for her. Sure she made some really stupid moves, sure she was infamous for being a difficult and abrasive personality, sure she may not deserve any sort of sympathy, but he couldn’t help but give some. Where ever she was, whatever she was doing, he was pretty sure she was hurting.

And it was hard for him not to wish for her to heal as best she could.

Once he got to school, the various trials and tribulations involved wiped the story of Andréa Donovan’s downfall from his head and he wouldn’t think of her again until some months later.

But the compassion he felt, the sympathy he held, would always be there.