Price of Perfection

by Christopher Moore

 

Elias lived by the millimeter. Anything beyond that, a sliver of white daring to peek from beneath his nail, was an affront to his meticulously ordered world. His OCD, a relentless warden, kept him a prisoner of his fingertips. Clippers became his weapon, his constant companion. He'd snip in the office bathroom, the metallic clicks a frantic counterpoint to the fluorescent hum. Meetings were a blur, his eyes fixated on his betraying nails, willing them to stay pristine. Dates were a distant memory, the thought of someone tracing imperfections on his hand an unbearable trespass.

One evening, the familiar itch bloomed, a thousand tiny insects burrowing under his skin. This time, the dull snip of the clippers only deepened his frustration. The uneven cut, a jagged mockery, sent a cold dread spiraling through him. He reached for the nail file, a desperate attempt at order, but it wasn't enough. The sliver remained, a defiant flag waving in the face of his control.

Despair morphed into a chilling resolve. He wouldn't chase millimeters anymore. He'd sever the source of his torment.  The sewing scissors, heavy and cold, felt like an extension of his own fractured mind. He began with his thumb. The first snip was clean, the blood a shocking betrayal. But this time, there was no panic, just a chilling emptiness. He took a ragged breath and continued, the metal a methodical metronome against the bone. Each sickening crunch, a perverse counterpoint to the symphony of his unraveling.

The metallic tang of blood filled his nostrils, a thick fog obscuring the room. He watched, detached and horrifyingly fascinated, as the tips of his fingers fell, crimson teardrops on the white countertop. The pain, delayed by the adrenaline rush, arrived in a crescendo, a white-hot symphony that threatened to drown him. He fumbled for bandages, the world reduced to a pulsing red mess.

As dawn bled through the window, casting a sickly hue on the scene, Elias sat, the weight of his mangled hands a physical manifestation of his shattered existence. The cycle, he knew with a grim certainty, wouldn't break. But the millimeters wouldn't taunt him anymore. He'd taken a drastic step, a horrifying one, but in the warped logic of his OCD, it felt like a perverse form of peace.  He, the prisoner, had finally escaped his own mind, even if the cost was a life confined to the cold, sterile silence of his self-made cage.