Demon Butterfly

What do you do when the apology speech you’ve written for the CEO works too well? Set against the glossy, brutal world of mainstream fashion, and told with daring precision and sly humour, Demon Butterfly is a twisty satire about the fallout an ambitious woman faces after she chooses to place her career above all.

This job will either save me or kill me. My mom’s been telling her friends I’ve entered “high society,” which is cute, but then I imagine myself in an ergonomic chair, trying to name the next viral pair of pants, and don’t know how to feel. Thrilled? Devastated? And do you think “The Rearview Jean™” is cute or a perpetuation of the male gaze?

Elke Vanderbeek appears to be thriving in her role as Copy Director at renowned fashion brand, Aava Minka. However, the scope of Elke’s responsibility unexpectedly widens when she is chosen to take on a problematic project: craft a convincing public apology for JP Fitcher, her company’s mercurial CEO, after he is accused of “inappropriate behaviour." Going against all her instincts—fuelled by a pathological need for approval and the fear that she’ll never be as successful as her music producer boyfriend or be able to pursue her life-long dream of publishing a book—Elke writes the apology. Her conscience reels.

When Faedra Dunn, a reclusive former model whose face was everywhere in the early 2000s, reaches out with bizarre and disturbing new information, Elke is confronted with the all-too-tangible consequences of her actions. With her personal life on the brink of collapse and the fevered, absurd hustle of her job almost too much to bear, will Elke make things right or will she continue climbing the ladder at Aava Minka for the small price of a piece of her soul?