Fun Park

Welcome to the Indoor Fun Park Penitentiary: where all convicted fairy-tale villains serve their eternal sentences.

If she’d known this was the hell she’d end up in, Grim would never have poisoned that apple. Her ears rang with sound of children, screeching like tyres braking too fast. Salty chips and the rich, sticky sugar of slushies forced their way into her nose; an uninvited guest she had no way of telling to leave. She clasped a stray red ball that some relentless monster had lobbed over the net of the ball pit. The sight of it reminded her of the moment that graffitied her fate in the stars.

“We got another one.” Her supervisor called, parting the crowds of disgruntled parents clutching their lattes with exasperated strain. Grim forced herself to look at Drizella’s face. She’d gotten into the unfortunate habit of staring at the girl’s feet every time she ran into her. That’s what she was known for, after all. The stepsister whose dreams were squashed when her giant heel wouldn’t fit into Cinderella’s shoe. Bigfoot, the workers called her behind her back.

“Code Yellow?” Grim sighed. No matter how vehemently she scrubbed her hands, she could never get that stench of urine out of her after a Code Yellow.

“Nah,” said Bigfoot, sidestepping a sweaty toddler who was ramming a toy car into the shins of everyone nearby. “A kid’s stuck.”

Her insides clenched. She doubted her knees could withstand another climb up the plastic jungle. It twisted ominously above her like an enormous multi-coloured beast with tentacles and pustules sprouting from its body. A girl with blond piggy tails squeaked down the slide, her tutu skirt wedged into her undies. Grim felt her sour mood turn completely rotten. The piggy tailed girl was going to be beautiful, extraordinary. She’d be the envy of women everywhere. She’d flirt with boys and poison their hearts, giving them nothing for everything. She’d ruin them. Grim’s fingers twitched, surely it was in the best interests of humanity to do something about that….

Bigfoot snapped her back to reality: “Grimhilde? He’s in the seahorse’s treehouse. You going?” Bigfoot cocked her hip and clicked her tongue impatiently. Her disguise as a sultry teenage worker in the Humantale Realm was quite convincing.

“Yes. Yes I’m going.” The piggy tailed girl had disappeared, the fun park roared with maniacal anguish.

Grim passed the hall of crazy mirrors. They were the only reflective glass she was allowed to have any contact with. She paused for a moment in front of one that made her look like she’d been stretched like a string of Blu-Tac. She marvelled at the slenderness of her thighs, two little pop-sticks side by side. A reflection was a reflection, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t real.

She climbed to the topmost part of the jungle, ignoring the pangs of murderous jealously as pretty little girls scampered passed her like rats.

Grim frowned when she saw the lost boy, dirty and tearstained, glowing in the sickening green of the tunnel.

“What are you doing here, Hansel?”