Hey guys! I'm having a bit of trouble getting back on a roll with writing (I want to skip to all the really good scenes that happen later is the problem), but in the meantime, I don't want to leave you guys hanging. I might write some songfics too, but in the meantime, enjoy!
Perfection
He would never understand the obsession with being perfect.
There had, in his memory, always been such an obsession. Humanity ached to recreate itself in its own image. It was an image of beauty, to be certain, and he could understand the appeal, but the uniformity of it all left him rather bored.
Smooth skin and glossy hair, advertisements across the decades promised. He'd see declarations of cures for yellowed teeth and balding heads, surgeons who economized on people's insecurities, models who all seemed to share the same vacant, symmetrical smile. Weight loss products existed in every form. Flesh, it seemed, was almost the enemy to the collective human mind. How utterly banal it all was.
There were variations, of course. The box lured in souls from the world over, and he learned through his glimpses of Earth how the standards changed. But there was always this sameness to it, this silent compelling of humanity to conform. Beauty, it seemed, ultimately did not cater itself to humanity. Humanity had to cater to beauty.
He had seen true beauty. He, in his lifetime of exploring sensation and pushing the limits of experience, had learned the value and richness in flesh. A person's entire history was written in their bodies, and as he tested that flesh he learned their lives. He could see the scars on a man's face and know that man was afraid of fire, and he could know when that fear began. He could see the layers of callouses on a woman's fingers and know that she crafted with glass, and how much she loved it. The white lines on a girl's hands and the one on her cheek told him of shielding her face from broken glass, dark circles told him so much more than just how much sleep that person had missed.
Perhaps that was why there was such a call to hide it. Smooth the skin, style the hair until it looks fake. Wear this product, undergo that operation, be this tall or wear shoes to make yourself so. Sameness, it seemed, was what humanity cried out for. Everybody must be perfect, must be the same, so as not to expose that a vulnerable soul dwelled within.
"Please don't hurt me," the lead Cenobite looked at the woman who had spurred the train of thought, while flipping through memories of envy and longing gazes at advertisements. He pulled a blade from his belt, and she swallowed a sob.
"No tears," he spoke almost reassuringly, bringing the knife just below her jaw, "this is a gift. I will teach you," red trickled from her skin as he started applying pressure, "the perfection of your flesh."