noun; The fear of imperfection or not being good enough; an extreme fear of failing to achieve perfection in any of one’s actions, ideas, or beliefs.
With the house on the corner, it sat forty years, never once sold by the bank after foreclosure. Children used it as a halfway home, trashing the windows and damaging the walls. Grass overtook the yard, well above the broken windows; shingles laying in the road as the wind blew them off the roof.
Siding and paint, chipping and break; fading away back into entropy. But no one would acknowledge the decay before them, choosing to remember it as the gorgeous pink house on the hill. Dilapidated and falling into wither, yet no one called it for what it was;
That house is caving in with abandonment. No amount of make up or TLC shall repair the damage. The foundation is cracked, ground’s no longer fertile, the fields zoned to commercial.
But ‘The Maw’, and every prior visit, was exquisite. He’d remembered the previous matriarch that held the title of ‘The Lady’, though he himself never much interacted with her.
It wasn’t about knowing people in the Maw that mattered, it was that the Maw noted you that mattered. The Ladies were always... Particular about their guests. To the point of heavy scrutiny.
Oh, the Ladies were a vain bunch. often hiding behind masks to keep blemishes from their faces, the judgmental creatures were, what’s the word?
-:{N a r c i s s i s t i c}:-
Slowly, oh mustn’t dirty your dress, did the currently Lady shuffle her feet towards him. Traditional, the Lady looked the perfect image of old Japanese culture, at least as he imaged it being, but kept the American sense of self worth.
Crane tipped his head in greeting, compromising between the cultures’ greetings right in the center. “Thank you for inviting back to ‘The Maw’,” eyes examined the walls, the edges, “You’ve made changes since I was last here, when the previous Lady was in charge. It looks better than it did.”
