You think you know us, but you do not. In every story, there lies more than meets the eye. Not everything waits for you in the realm of black and white, pretty pastels, fancy script, and sparkles. For every perfection, a parallel exists. For every good there has to be an evil. That is simply the way of any world. How else can you define these two judgments? For every holy, luminous, and pure almighty, somewhere lays a sinful, dark, and soiled cancellation. For every heaven there is a hell.

I am a resident of one of these aforementioned hells. All of us live in the dank other world that accompanies the world of the fairies that you humans know so well. Do you think really think that everyone can exist as Cinderella or Snow White, that every evil stepmother receives the just punishment? Just because justice is blind does not mean she cannot show equal prejudice determined by use of her other senses. Lovely Liberty and the ever-fair Justice aren’t exactly as impeccable as you deem them. They just had good writers and endorsements behind them. What we never had.

We were all the subject and substance of legends that never experienced our own fairytales. We were the ink blots on a page that had to go to make Aurora make it to her happily ever after. We inhibited her, so we had to go. We were the books banned because our lore depicted the true nature of life. In short, we are everything you never have seen and never will see. We are mistakes only once made. Yet our numbers never stop growing. Why is that?

We are crammed in the fog now, my cohorts and I. That is all we can ever be. Friendship is good, so it cannot exist in this universe. We are alone, and all of us lepers repulse one another. We all become just a part of the setting. Lifeless cardboard cutouts just standing around, to the point of littering the stage.

Our stage is the opposite of Eden, or rather, what Eden became after the casting out of Adam and Eve at the hands of the serpent. It is a cold, hot, foggy, barren, and utterly isolated hell. Our finally resting place, yet we do not rest in peace. We never will, but maybe our descendents can manage to find some ray of light to climb up.

We are the stuff of nightmares. We are the matter haunts a child in the night: the images of the witch winning, prince charming falling in love with the wrong girl, who somehow managed to be better, the hero or heroine coming to lie with us. That is all we are. Black smoke and mirrors, the phantoms of the night.


The sad thing is, we are just as ever-present as our counter parts. You do not know our names; however, you know our presence all too well. We lie inside you, and form a part of you. We create the void for a dormant emptiness in your soul just waiting to be utilized. We lurk in the dark and dull shadows of the corner of your eye. Look in the mirror. Can you see us?