Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

by Ashley Winstead

What is it about us teenage girls that claws so deeply under people’s skin? We’re reviled and desired in equal measure; cringed at, laughed at, then lunged at. The sheer effort people like my father and my teachers have spent trying to control us. So many dress codes and rigid rules and unspoken ones we have taken on the mantel of policing ourselves, looking in the mirror and wincing at our reflections, drawing our own blood first, before others can. I think my father wants me to erase myself the way everyone who opposed him erased themselves while he was rising to power. Perhaps he’s doing the same thing to me he did with the occult. Perhaps deep down, like with the swamp spiritualism, he recognizes I could be a threat and must be taken off the map.