Evil Make-Believe

Young girls, what’s the wonder in dreaming themselves power.

Messy pink nail polish and fingers crackling with energy, arms twined with sharpie scribbles of magic symbols, coveted purple gel pen glitter. Grape-scented. Buckets of flowers and leaves and rainwater and maybe more exotic things, brewing potions and poultices, poisons for goblins and ghosts or whatever your local children’s mythos paints as a villain for little witches to vanquish. I was one of them once, and I always won.

Sometimes you’re small and calling down the darkness. Sometimes you are the darkness, or want to be, evil in a distinctly sparkly, barbie movie children’s book way. You can tell I’m a villain by the way my colour scheme has switched to blacks and greys and methylated spirits purple. Look how my eyes are red now, or maybe toxic waste green. Customise the colour scheme of your corruption.

The purple dress always less favoured than the pink wings and fluffy plastic “glass slippers”, but sometimes when they make you be the evil queen, not the fairy princess, you can take it as a compliment and eat their hearts in the roleplay game out of spite. You’re a method actor on this playground. The bushes and tree stumps are your nightmare palace. Cue the lightning, cue the bats, pause for thunder.

And there are no boys allowed in the Demon Realm. It gets boring fighting over who gets to be

Gwen from Ben 10 and who has to wait so like I guess you can be one of the guys from Winx but I’m being Darcy and she’s being Icy so that means we have to torture you sorry. We can play mums and dads tomorrow though…

Get called inside for dinner and leave the concoctions to fester in the playhouse out of spite. There may be ants but at least the goblins are vanquished and the witches win for today.

— Amelia Kirkness, Cashmere High School