The Curse of Once Upon a Time

Chapter V: Superman's Real Origin Story

There's an origin story to Superman that nobody ever knew. That's because we made it. Tellers. Not me, really. A group of three. Pollux, Emory, and Zephyr. They created it based off something they saw in the human world.

Now, we can't go to the human dimension. Not without permission from the Council. But we can see them from the Upper dimension. It's where I often go. Emory once witnessed a man being shot multiple times, leading to his ultimate death.

They went to Pollux and Zephyr, wondering whose father that could have been. They drafted the idea for a bullet proof man. A man that could only be killed by one thing. Naturally, it was baby-proofed by the Council and sent the idea down to a human. Jerry Siegel.

You may have heard a few different interpretations of how he was created. That he might have been a defender for the weak or that he was a villain at first before he came to being a superhero. It's how pretty much every iconic story or character works.

We create the regular version, the Council tweaks it, and humans come up with their own versions. I don't think Superman was so terrible. People didn't really have to know that he was created after the murder of a father.

There's the 50 regular Tellers working to create stories and five on the Council. The only names you really need to know are the Councils'. Blythe, Saylor, Sparrow, Chance, and Edley. All Tellers, demons, angels, and a few spirits were created around the same time.

Our theory is that the Council were some of the first five to come into existence. They have just a tiny bit more power than regular Tellers. I suppose that you should also know my name. Saige. The name I picked. We all got to pick our names. They've changed a few times for some people.

Most of the time, Tellers pick their names off things in the human world. Pretty much anything that we might find interesting. For a little while, one of us had the name Chair. I don't know what they had seen in chairs, but the good thing is that we can pick whatever name we want whenever we want.

As far as our formation goes, we look like humans. Almost all immoral beings look like humans. Demons can change their form to their liking. Some look like humans, some look like fiery beasts. Angels are the perfect version of humans. Baby skin, translucent figures, some of them are way too pale. They're like humans with a ton of makeup on, but it's natural. Really annoying.

I guess I can't complain. Tellers can change their looks to how they feel. I prefer to feel like just a regular human. Some Tellers have crazily dyed rainbow hair. Spirits look exactly like humans. Just regular humans.

Many spirits are deceased humans that pass onto a second stage of life. Not all humans pass to that stage. There are very few humans that make it to be a spirit. I'm not even sure how or which humans get selected. Against all odds, Atlantis was one of the few.

I'm not quite sure how it happened. Maybe it was because I watched over her and Serenity so much or if it was just because she was a good person that deserved better, but shortly after Atlantis died, the essence that had been Atlantis reformed into a spirit.

All immortal beings can interact with one another. We live in different dimensions, but it's not impossible to travel between them. There's five dimensions in total. The human dimension is the basic dimension. It's right in the middle of the stack.

The dimension above it is the Upper dimension. The Upper dimension consists of angels, spirits, and sometimes demons. It's not common that they like to interact in the Upper dimension. Then there's the Lower dimension right under the human dimension. The dimension holds mostly spirits, some demons, and a tiny bit of angels.

The bottom most dimension is the Hell dimension. There's a variety of names for that dimension. It's where a majority of the demons reside. There are tons of different little areas around there. The typical image of hell, fire everywhere, but there's also a regular type of Earth. Every demon is different.