Alright, just so you know, Atelophobia means 'fear of imperfection'.

---

She strived to be perfect.

In everything she did, she reached for that one goal, whether it meant working all night. She wanted to be the best, she wanted the knowledge that she was better then everyone, because all her life she had been told she was scum. She was scum, dirt, a disgrace, imperfect. And that was the one that got her the most. Imperfect. He called her a whore, a slut, son of a bitch mother fucker imperfect.

She couldn’t handle imperfect. She didn’t care what he called her, what he said about the sad excuse of a daughter. But she couldn’t handle imperfect.

It was the summary of all her fears, all her worries and her doubts, of everything she had tried and failed at, all in one word. It was everything she was and everything she hated all in one.

She hated it, hated him, but in that hate was imperfection, because perfect people did not hate. And she hated that, hated that she hated, hated that she couldn’t bring herself to love him no matter what, couldn’t bring herself to love herself, hated her imperfection. It was him, him who caused all of this, and if only he were gone, if only he were gone, she could be perfect.

And so she planned. She planned everything, for weeks, for months; she planned down to the smallest detail, to the hairs she could lose, to anything that could be used as evidence against her. She planned so carefully, so perfectly, that there was no way, no chance that anything could wrong. She watched the shows and did the research, looking for anything she might have missed, and when she was done, she went back and she looked again, just to make sure. She checked and she double checked, and then she checked again just to make sure, and then she was done.

She was done and she was sure of it, because she had checked constantly and repeatedly, looking for flaws, for clues, looking from the point of view of someone else, from a trained professional, and then she learned to act.

She taught herself, every night, to cry, on cue, to sob great, heart wrenching sobs, learned to make herself cry when she wanted to, and then she learned how to get people to sympathize with her. She would go out into the middle of the street and sob, shake and moan, and when little old ladies or mothers or grandma’s, grandpa’s or dad’s or old men came up to her and ask her what was wrong, she would reply with things such as, ‘a dog just passed that looked an awful lot like mine did. We had to put him to sleep just last week,’ or, ‘the song playing from her radio was my mother’s favourite song. She’s dead now.’ She learned to cry and she learned to evoke sympathy, and when that was over, when she was a master at it, when she was perfect, she put the plan to action.

She didn’t hesitate. Hesitation was a form of imperfection. She went right to it, spreading the right words, making the right phone calls, forging the note just perfectly. She set about it with ease, acting out her well thought out planned with perfection. And then, when the moment came, when she looked up into his eyes, she didn’t hesitate. Not for a second. Hesitation was a form of weakness, was a form of imperfection she would no longer have. Then she pulled the trigger.

And then she cried. She cried and she shook and she moaned and she asked where her father was, why he did this, what had she done? She sobbed and she got the sympathy, got the sympathy that won over the cops when they questioned her, when she said she had come downstairs after she heard the gunshot and saw her father, bleeding on the floor. And then finally, finally they ruled his case a suicide, and they let it to rest.

And she was perfect.