The Curse of Once Upon a Time

Chapter I: The Town of Aoiski

Serenity Wioax was nothing more than ordinary. She lived in an itsy-bitsy town that was smaller than a dust particle. There was nothing interesting about the town of Aoiski. The only thing that might have mattered were the people that made it.

Serenity's great-great-great-great-great-something grandfather and her great-great-great-great-great-something uncle had formed the town. It was named after her uncle's last name. His last name had been Asoki, but they'd changed it to Aoiski a few years later.

Her grandfather hadn't gotten credit to his name. Serenity didn't think that was so horrible. From what she had heard, neither of them had done anything too interesting. The only thing that placed Asoki over her Wioax was that Asoki had worked as a commander during war.

Wioax almost got the chance to meet with some of the founding fathers. But he didn't. It was an almost. He hadn't. To give him any credit for that was like saying that a soccer player should get points for almost hitting the ball into the goal. It didn't make any sense to give him credit.

Serenity had a simple family. She just had a huge one. Her family had lived in the tiny little town of Aoiski since it was created. Her grandparents were strict and seeing that she was the only misfit in her family, they tended to target her with their expectations.

Trying to live up to her brother's standards was the closest thing to impossible. Salvadore Wioax was a straight-A student. Serenity had more of a C standard. It annoyed her that she knew everybody liked Salvadore better because he was smarter and more impressive than her.

Serenity didn't think that she should really be upset about being the worst in a family that had been around since Earth's creation, but still hadn't done anything important. They'd never done anything more than a regular human could. Never invented a cure for a sickness, never started a revolution, never even left Virginia.

After she had already defied so many expectations that her family had, Serenity wanted to be the one to change it. She wanted to go to college out of state, and adventure across the world. The only problem was actually doing it. She didn't have money and had no clue how she was supposed to get money.

Her family had money, but rule breaking wasn't so much their forte. Their love for her could never overpower their will to follow etiquette. Serenity wasn't a fool. Not in matters of her family. She knew that they would never love her the way they loved their history.

If she hadn't come to terms with it, the thought of being unfavored, unloved, and castaway might have upset her, but she'd learned to cope. When something doesn't work, you pivot. That's what she had always done.

The only thing that might have been interesting about their family was that they believed in the paranormal. Or most of them did. Serenity didn't. Her grades weren't a proper representation of her wit. School forced them to learn things that they wouldn't know otherwise. Serenity knew what she needed to know and she knew what she didn't need to know.

If it were really a battle of wits, she would say that she would win. She was the only one with a sense of reality. The only one that didn't cave to foolish beliefs about the paranormal. How could it even be possible that ghosts existed? If they really did, everybody would know it.

As it turns out, things get boring. Years of existence and none to minor interactions was nothing. One thing every few years was nothing. If there were really spirits, there would be so many more reports. More than kids being scared after something weird happened while they were home alone.

Seemingly, the worst part about living in a little village where there were so few people was that everybody knew everybody. Everybody knew everything about each other. That was perhaps the worst part about a town so small. Her image wouldn't be so bad if they lived in some big city in the middle of New York.