In my version, the Beast is beautiful. The Beast has a Roman nose and eyes like a swinging watch. When he meets Belle, they get to talking. They end up fooling around on her couch. He’s planting sweet kisses on her neck when he snaps and bites down hard. Belle jolts back. 

“What are you, crazy??”

He doesn’t blink, covers his face with his hands, and begins to weep.

“I’m sorry," he sobs. She softens. He tells her, he lashed out in fear. He doesn’t know any better. He tells her it all started a long time ago with a woman’s betrayal. The tale goes like this: He, the lovestruck boy holding roses, swooning on one knee. Her, the lurid temptress, rivaling the whore of Babylon. He, drudging on, a husk of his youth, doomed to a life of loneliness. He says he's never told this to anyone before. Belle, her eyes pin-pricked with tears, strokes his hair and assures him softly,

“Don’t be scared. You’re safe with me.” 

The Beast grins so wide the corners crack, for this is his favorite part, for the meat is always softer when the muscles are relaxed. Belle mistakes his hubris for grace and takes pride in her own patience. How special she must be, for this creature to reveal his heart of gold to her and her alone. She can hardly understand why they call him “Beast.” They are cruel, she concludes. The Beast leans in. Belle closes her eyes and purses her lips. She hangs in the air a moment too long, and by the time her belly floods with dread, by the time she sees the madness in his eyes, the drool dripping down his chin, oh it’s too late. 

In my version, the Beast whistles on his way home, chewing on a toothpick, loosening pieces of Belle from his teeth. He pins a lock of brown hair to the wall, admires it, runs his nails over the others, black, blonde, bottled blue, and sighs. Why must he always feel so dreadfully unsatisfied? He sits on his bed and stares into the mirror, lets his face slacken, then pulls it up into a smile, again and again. Until the morning light floods in and he catches the scent of a new brunette as she passes under his window. 

In my version, Belle’s father cries over an empty casket, his belly bulging under a worn brown vest. He can’t stop hiccupping, wiping at his mustache with a wet handkerchief. He smells like damp earth. No one will go near him. Her friends stand aside, bickering under their breath. 

“You did warn her.” 

“I did,” mutters the girl missing half of her left hand. 

“She always had bad taste,” says the sausage maker’s daughter. 

“It’s just so sad.”

“So sad,” the girls agree. 

In my version, the town loses a damsel per month. But what can be done? Beasts will be beasts, and there’s no stopping it. No one has time to go to battle over one bad apple, everyone is just trying to eat and pay rent, you know. If only those silly girls would just quit going near the castle.