“Once Upon a Time” is a story about fear set during apartheid in South Africa. Its narrator uses a fearful experience of her own to segue into a parable about a family whose fear of violence causes them to take extreme measures that end in their son being severely hurt, and possibly dying. The narrator imagines that someone has broken into her house, inflating a sound into an imaginary person. Even though the narrator does not see an intruder, she feels like a victim when she recalls stories about recent violent events. Similarly, the family the narrator describes in her story amplifies its own fears. The family inflates news of nearby protests and burglaries into racist alarm over imaginary Black intruders into white homes, even though the protests are so far away that the family never sees them.

The narrator mentions that the people in the townships beyond the suburb are “of another colour” than the family. Given the political and social situation in South Africa at that time, one can infer that the narrator and the family in the story are white while the housemaid, gardener, intruders, and rioters are Black. During apartheid, roughly 75% of South Africans were Black people of many ethnicities, including those indigenous to the region.