Perfect

She can't help but feel incredibly foolish; she should have known better than to think, than to hope the warning was a glitch. There are no such things as mistakes.

She shakes off the past few minutes and continues her trek home. As she nears, the unsettling feeling of being followed pricks her skin. It's nothing. She widens her smile a bit, ensuring none will assume anything is wrong. Nothing ever is. The feeling persists and she finally turns around.

A man trails her, merely steps away . He catches her eye and grins. A chill runs down her back; it is not a smile of kindness and innocence, but one that speaks of dark alleys and malicious intents. But who can really tell; a smile is a smile, right?

She returns it with her own small smile – hopefully not a tempting one – and quickens her pace – but not too much; not too fast. She takes a few turns, purposefully passing by android officers. Quite ironic, how they rove the streets. If society is perfect, why are there police officers? Of course, they're just there as a "precaution" and are only alerted through their systems if a camera picks up something.

She glances back to the man that continues to follow her footsteps. Panic clutches her and her heart pounds. Please no, not again, not again.

She glimpses her apartment complex a few streets ahead, and her sole focus is to reach it, to reach the safety and security of seclusion. Tears prick her eyes and she prays for someone, anyone to notice something suspicious about a man trailing a young woman. But no one notices anything wrong when all they know is everything perfect.

At last, she reaches her building and dashes inside. As she enters the elevator, she catches the man standing outside, leering at her. His eyes glint with a promise - a promise that screams of danger and horrid actions that always manage to be justified by those sworn to protect her. The doors close and she is lifted up to her floor.

She enters her apartment and collapses onto the couch. A million thoughts race through her head, stumbling over each other in their determination to be answered immediately. Each thought questioning what she did to cause the man to follow her.

The chip in her brain allows her to rescan the days events, the footage taken from the cameras. She scrolls through as her mind battles between her questions and the images flashing in her head. Was it my clothes? Did I wear something too revealing? Did I walk in a certain way? Did I do something or say something tempting? There. That has to be it. Her neck line had dropped a little. A few moments later, the man began his chase.

She releases a shaky breath. She was lucky that nothing happened. It was too close. Too close to what happened last time. She thinks of the way the man followed her; the way he looked at her, as though she was some sort of prize won at a carnival of malice – like some object meant to amuse him.

Her hands curl into fists, nails digging into her palms so hard she feels the skin splitting like the fraying seams of her mind. Why her. Why is it whenever any situation like the one she barely escaped from occurs, she is to be punished? She is told she was wrong, that she brought it upon herself. Why isn't the man that put her in such a situation ever dealt with?

Clarity washes over her, and her fists loosen. She shakes her head, feeling irrational. How could anyone assume the man meant her harm? How could she assume it herself? He was simply walking. That is all. There was no proof of any cruel intent at all. It could have been her mind playing tricks, her own paranoia.

But she can't help the rolling shudder that arrives with the memory of how way he looked at her, how he followed her all the way home. Yet, who would believe someone who already supposedly mistook another man's purposes before? Someone who hadn't been able to prove a situation that happened in the past, one that began the same way as today but left deeper scars in her mind and body.

Her eyes travel down to her right ankle, where skin melds into metal. A warning. A punishment. A reminder from the government to watch herself and to not accuse someone of such an awful act when it was a simple miscommunication and misunderstanding on her end; and a message to society, screaming, "Look what happens when you step out of line."

She gazes at the picture frames dotting the walls and sitting on ledges. Her family, every one of them long ago deemed flaws in the perfect world that has been created. All diseases cured; no wars; no famine or poverty. There is only one price to pay: perfection.

Of course, the population began to get out of hand. No one realized it, but wars and other disasters kept the population controlled – in a sick sort of way. Now, to ensure there were enough resources, flaws of society, those who don't quite fit in, are taken away. If one is perfect, no reason to worry.

Unless, your entire family was declared unfit. Imperfect. Perhaps that is why she has so much trouble conforming, so much trouble staying confined to the cell of perfection barred by the claims and demands of alignment. Perfect people don't place themselves into dangerous situations.

After a few moments, she calms. It won't happen again, she commands herself firmly. From now, I will be nothing if not perfect.

But you can only tell yourself that so many times.

Suddenly, the lights of the apartment darken. Red flashes throughout the apartment, intermittently coating the walls with blood. Areas where chips have embedded themselves burn.

She cries out, crumpling to the ground. She recognizes the signs that have occurred too many times to count, each one followed by another piece of her life torn away.

Dread and fear blind her. No, no, no. I'm perfect. Perfect. Perfect. I have to be. The pleas trip over each other in her head. She chokes on the words that have filled her life and she shrieks the mantra like a vain prayer.

Then all stops.

The blanket of silence holds more nightmares than a troubled sleep. A scream wrenches itself from her throat and she allows it to reign as the air is the only witness to her anguish. No use in perfection when it's too late.

Tremors rack her body, shaking her with the force of a hundred earthquakes expounding from her core. Her phone bellows the sentencing rings and she clutches it with trembling hands. A message is displayed on the screen: Flaw.