Perfection

Big houses, long cars, and an ever-expanding wardrobe packed to its capacity with Fendi, Guccci and Armani. This is perfection.

Yes, Charlene was in every way, perfect. Too perfect to be called human in fact. Always impeccably dressed, she was the very epitome of success, wealth, and of course, perfection. 

She could not stand mistakes, carelessness or any wrongdoings. It was just not her style. It was just not perfect.

But amidst the cloud of Christian Dior perfume that perpetually hung around her, amidst the straight, unsmiling face contorted with seriousness, amidst the business power suit that fitted her like a second glove, Charlene Smith was far from perfect. 

She was so broken, so imperfect, that all the more, she strived and yearned and mourned to be perfect. Seamless. 

One would winder why, of course amidst the awe and wonder one felt after stepping into her palace-like mansion, everything felt so controlled and void of something. You could not make out exactly what that something was, but it was there, gnawing at your thoughts. 

And then suddenly it struck you. No photographs, no memoirs, no nothing. What had the girl been doing her whole life? Immersed and drowning among those thick, cumbersome law books? 

Maybe she was a robot? Or perhaps the pressure to stay perfect has wiped out all traces of love in her mind. 

However, there must be something, anything at all, that signified that she was human and imperfect. You squint your eyes, you search high and low, you flip over every piece of furniture (made of the best redwood, of course) in her mansion, but still, you would not find even a small token of imperfection. 

Where was it?

It now became more of an obligation to find it, rather than a desire to find it. You needed to prove that she was human! That she was not perfect. 

Well, if you could not find anything even after tearing down her house down to the last wood splinter with a gigantic bulldozer, you would not be blamed. It was because the very thing that you had frenetically been searching for was secretly stowed away in the deep abysses of her heart… Locked, with the key thrown away. 

You would think that, oh my, now it would be impossible for me to find it. 

Well, that was not exactly true. I had gained excess to that impenetrable, almost forgotten vault before, and inside lay not even more riches and wealth and grand ideas to roll in more money, but instead, inside lay dark, dark secrets. Secrets that made me shiver with horror.