Aimé Césaire stated that colonialism “dehumanizes even the most civilized man; thatcolonial activity, colonial enterprise, colonial conquest, which is based on contempt,inevitably tends to change him who undertakes it; that the colonizer, who in order toease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustomshimself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself intoan animal” (Césaire 2000, 41). The dehumaniation bred from colonialism persists in apernicious pattern of roleplaying theorized by Stephen B. Karpman in his Drama Triangle,a model for understanding how game and script roles perpetuate destruction.Describing his drama triangle, Karpman writes, “A person ‘living in a fairy tale’ usuallyhas a simplified view of the world with a minimum of dramatic characters, acting in thedestructive roles of victim, perpetrator, and rescuer” (Karpman 1968, 39). The dramatriangle models the players’ actions as they move among the positions of victim, perpetrator,and rescuer. Nadine Gordimer’s short story, “Once Upon a Time,” brings readersinto the hallucinatory world of the settler fairy tale while exposing its pathologicaldynamics. A constructive reading of Gordimer’s “Once Upon a Time” with Karpman’sdrama triangle offer a way out, one that reverses the logic of fairytale roleplaying andmoves toward a fuller sense of humanity. To get there, we must go beyond just mourningthe dead and mourn the loss of our collective humanity to colonial fairytale roles andthe dynamics of violence they entail.