Dreadful

by Caitlin Rozakis

“Evil isn’t math, right? It’s not like I can do some magic number of good deeds that will somehow balance out the bad things. I can’t unhurt the people I hurt, even if I tried to change the way I act now.”

“No one cares what do, just what look like,” Orla explained. “Heroes good because wear white and people like. Villains bad because wear black and ugly. Heroes kill goblin children, everybody cheer. Villains give home to goblins, everybody hiss. Goblins can serve evil master and sometimes safe in castle walls, or can live in stinky swamp and still get killed by baby heroes. So goblins evil?”

“Who’s the real anyone? When does who you’re pretending to be stop being a pretense and turns into who you really are?”