MISS PERFECT AND THE SIN EATER

CHAPTER ONE: THE PERFECT SINNER PART 5

“I am Alanza... known to the world as 'Miss Perfect.' I earned that title through sheer force of will. People think I’m an angel or a robot born with these gifts, but they are wrong. I wasn't born flawless; I learned to be. Whether it was dancing, project management, singing, or design…I mastered it all because I had to survive. They don't see the sweat or the scars; they only see the magic. I chased every job that offered a paycheck, turning every struggle into a lesson. I have fallen, I have crumbled in the dark, and I have been shattered a thousand times. But I never gave up, because for someone like me, failure was a luxury I could never afford. In addition to all this, I am also a ‘$in Eater’. I was ten years old when I started this work.”

At that age of innocence, where other children play with toys, Alanza was absorbing the sins of others into her very being. The irony was that the so-called respect she received and her identity as 'Miss Perfect' had been given to her by this very work.

The bus screeched to a halt, the sudden jolt throwing Alanza forward. She stumbled for a second, catching her breath before quickly composing herself; she had reached her stop. Stepping down onto the wet asphalt, she felt the refreshing bite of the afternoon breeze. The rain had ceased, but the world was still damp and glistening under the overcast sky. A few pedestrians walked by, their folded umbrellas still damp, wary of the clouds above.Before her stood the company…a colossal glass monolith that seemed to pierce the retreating clouds. This wasn't just an office; it was a vertical city. Within these glass walls, every floor hummed with a different world…from tech and design to media and finance. It was a hive of diverse industries, all functioning under one roof. While one man owned this entire empire and oversaw every floor, he spent most of his time in the Project Management wing…the very heart of the building where Alanza worked.

She stood before the company, gazing at it; the glass walls were absorbing the shifting colors of the sky. The rain’s fury had broken by now, but the road was still drenched, and a light drizzle lingered. Tilting her head back to look at the towering building, she let out a long, cold sigh. "Okay, let’s go, Alanza." She took a deep breath to motivate herself and began to step forward.

"You must be wondering…what is Sin Eating?" As she began to step forward, the train of her thoughts started once again.

“This custom originated in the rural areas of Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries. Its purpose is for the sins of a deceased person to be transferred from their soul into another living person, so that the soul of the dead may be purified to enter heaven. When death visits a wealthy or influential family, they summon a soul whom society has already cast aside…someone utterly destitute, a beggar. That person is the 'Sin-Eater.' According to the ritual, the deceased is laid within a coffin, and a piece of bread and a bowl of wine are placed upon their chest.”

‘It is only the wealthy who cling to this.’

They believe that the bread absorbs every transgression of the departed into its grain. After the bread has rested upon the corpse for a time, the Sin-Eater is called forward. Standing before the dead, they consume that bread, which is now deemed 'contaminated' by sin. By eating that bread and drinking the wine, it is understood that every minor and major sin of the deceased has been transferred into this living vessel. In exchange, the person is given a pittance and departs in silence.

Socially, the lives of these individuals are agonizing. People loathe them, believing that the sins of hundreds have accumulated within this one body, rendering their own soul damned to hell. No one shakes their hand, no one meets their gaze, and they are forbidden from living within the settlements. They dwell in the wilderness, summoned only when the shadow of death has fallen.

For the family of the deceased, it was a source of profound peace, believing their loved one had departed for the next world 'purified.'

As Alanza’s footsteps moved toward the company's threshold, a mocking, cynical smile surfaced on her face, as if she were mourning the sheer ignorance of these people.

“Yes! To take their filthy deeds, to take their sins upon one’s own head…they always need someone for that.” These were the people who stood as honorable in the eyes of the world, yet their souls were saturated with black soot.

‘Intoxicated by the power of their wealth, they believe that everything is a commodity to be bought…even the forgiveness of God.’

“These fools actually think that this will grant them absolution for their sins.”

She took a deep breath and paused. She had been carrying this burden since she was ten years old. She would sit by their deathbeds, sensing the stench of their dark deeds within the morsels of food placed before them, and then... by 'consuming' those sins, she would grant them a hollow consolation. In their eyes, they became pure, but Alanza? Each time, she became a little more soiled.

She was 'Miss Perfect' precisely because she knew the art of gathering the filth of others.

With full dignity, Alanza stepped forward and entered through the automated glass doors. The atmosphere inside was entirely different from the rainy weather outside…calm and fragrant. She elegantly pulled her ID card from her purse and moved toward the elevator.

The people passing by would look at her with smiles, bowing their heads respectfully as they greeted her with a 'Good evening.'

The moment they saw Alanza, a natural sense of joy would spread across their faces.

Even in these clothes, no one here looked at her with the same eyes people had outside. Within the confines of this building, she was a 'queen' whose every mannerism was admired. She did not see the fear or contempt on their faces that is usually tethered to the word ‘Sin-Eater’; instead, here she was simply their ‘Miss Perfect.’

Standing before the shimmering doors of the elevator, she looked at her reflection... she was beautiful. Utterly beautiful.

But as the elevator doors began to close, Alanza did not see her own beauty in the reflection.

“Do you know why I referred to Sin-Eaters as 'those people' earlier? Generally, people consider even looking at a Sin-Eater to be a sin,” she took a deep breath. Typically, such people are deemed ill…omened…vessels who absorb the spiritual filth of others into themselves. “But in my case, that is not how it is.”

The reason for this was very simple and pragmatic. “Because I am useful to everyone, being a Sin-Eater means nothing to them... rather, to them, it is just one more task among the many I perform.” In this corporate world, where every relationship is built on the foundation of necessity, Alanza’s 'perfection' was her true strength. These people had no concern for her background; they only had a need for the excellence of her craft.

As she stood in the elevator, Alanza caught her reflection in the polished metal doors and a bitter, wounded smile touched her lips. It was a mocking, sardonic laugh…a sharp expression of irony. A few stray locks of her raven-black hair had fallen across her face. Those dark tresses suited her immensely; she truly was breathtakingly beautiful. “Yes!” she thought to herself. “They get their work done; they have their own interests. But they give me respect, and for me, that is enough.”

She began to laugh at her own words, a loud, ringing laughter. “You know? Where there is a need, hatred dons the cloak of respect.”

Before she could sink any deeper into her thoughts, the silver doors slid open with a soft hum at the second floor. The company boss stepped inside, his commanding presence instantly filling the small space of the elevator.

“Good evening, Miss Alanza!”

Her boss welcomed her with a genuine, heartfelt warmth.

“Good evening, Sir,” Alanza replied, bowing her head in return. The doors sealed them in, and a heavy, awkward silence immediately filled the small space, stretching thin between their gazes.

“In this entire company, Sir is the only one who calls me by my name. One could say he is the reason I still remember my own name... the reason I remember that I have an identity, a soul of my own. Well, I am content. Perhaps I am the only human being who is granted both respect and wealth, despite being a Sin-Eater.”

While those of her kind were typically the pariahs of society, she held a position within the halls of power and the towering heights of the corporate world that many could only dream of.

The elevator chimed with a soft, melodic ring as it settled on the third floor. As the silver doors slid apart, Alanza stepped out into the hallway, offering her superior one last respectful tilt of her head before making her way toward her workstation.

As she moved through the corridor, a chorus of "Good evening, Miss" drifted from various corners of the room. Heads bowed in synchronized reverence as she passed each desk…a silent tribute to the woman they knew as 'Miss Perfect.'

The moment Mary caught sight of her, a wave of visible relief washed over her face, and she pulled Alanza into a sudden, tight embrace. “Thank God!” the exclamation burst from Mary’s lips, fueled by a frantic, nervous energy.

Alanza gently, almost coldly, disentangled herself from the hug and sank into her chair. Mary’s voice continued to rattle on, a frantic stream of words, but the sound failed to penetrate Alanza’s consciousness. To her, it was nothing more than distant, hollow noise.

“Looking at it all, perhaps I should be happy,” she murmured, taking a slow, heavy breath as her gaze swept over the luxuries surrounding her. “But I am not. Perhaps I am ungrateful, but I lack the one thing they all possess... a family.”

Resting her elbows on the desk, she buried her face in her hands and closed her eyes tight. “To tell the truth, I tell myself it doesn't matter, yet the ache remains. I find myself wondering…if I had a family, who would I truly be?” A whirlwind of questions began to stir in her mind. "Would I still be Miss Perfect? Or simply Alanza?"

“Would I have a full name?” A name that didn't just end abruptly, but one that carried the weight of generations and the recognition of blood ties. “Would I be something more than just Alanza?”

Instead of being a mere necessity, a tool, or a shield for the sins of others, would she have been whole in her own right? These were the questions to which she had no answers.

“There is no joy in me, for it is all a performance. When you look closely, we are all merely playing our parts.”

To her, the vibrant bustle of this corporate world felt like a theater stage, where every individual was draped in a cloak of hypocrisy. “We manifest a different persona for every person we encounter; we don the specific mask that pleases whoever it is we seek to gratify.” These rehearsed smiles, these rhythmic choruses of 'Good evening' they were all fragments of the masks carved from the wood of self-interest.

“And for those we truly loathe, we unveil our authentic selves…that ugly, raw character that no one desires to see.” She began to organize her files, yet the current of her thoughts remained relentless. “Here, everyone puts on a display of liking me, of respecting me.” She was acutely aware of the underlying repulsion hidden beneath Mary’s effusive affection and the bowed heads of the workers. “But I know the truth… after shaking my hand, they go to wash their own.”

To them, she was a living impurity, a necessary vessel summoned to contain their own filth…a "perfect defilement" they simply could not survive without.

Alanza’s eyes trailed the room, and within the curve of her vision, the scene unfolded exactly as she had anticipated. She watched Mary, who had just shed her cloak of effusive affection the moment she pulled away, hurrying toward the washroom in a desperate rush. Alanza knew that Mary was now frantic to scrub away the "uncleanness" that her touch had supposedly left behind with soap and water. A smile touched Alanza’s lips…a sharp, mocking curve of cold irony.

“The moment my back is turned, the whispers begin.” She looked at the rest of the workers, catching them huddled together, their eyes darting toward her as they traded hushed words behind her back.

Alanza took a deep, steadying breath to shake off the stifling, suffocating atmosphere of the room. She intercepted those arrows of mockery with the shield of her own practiced dignity.

“But none of this matters to me,” she mused, mentally pushing them aside. " They aren't even important enough to warrant my concern." Placing her pen on the desk, she repeated the mantra that had become her constant companion. She always voiced these grievances only to follow them with the claim that she didn't care…but was that truly the case?

“If anything is important, it is money.” In her mind’s eye, the rhythmic clink of coins and the dancing digits of a growing bank balance began to swirl. “Money is everything I want.”

This was her manifesto, the sole anchor of her survival. She had long since abandoned the mirage of love, sincerity, and human connection. To her, these mask-wearing hypocrites were nothing more than a source of revenue.

“And that is the very money they hand over to me once I’ve done their bidding.” She was entirely indifferent to whether they loathed her as a 'Sin-Eater' or idolized her as 'Miss Perfect,' so long as the price of her soul-weary labor was being transferred into her account. she had meticulously molded her life into a purely transactional existence. “To this day, I have never performed a single act without a motive.”

She leaned back against the headrest of her chair and reached out to the file, her fingertips grazing the paper that was destined to make her even wealthier.

“I, too, adopt whichever persona pleases them most. Isn’t that a delicious irony? They live under the blissful delusion that they are dancing me on their fingertips, while I believe it is I who am using them. In this elaborate masquerade, the identity of the true fool remains a mystery…even to me.”

She powered on the computer and dispatched the email to Mary. She was intent on bringing Mary’s massive project to its conclusion…a task for which she had already pocketed a substantial sum. This was no ordinary project; for Mary, it was the ladder to a promotion and the promise of a lucrative bonus. But someone else’s triumph or failure was never part of Alanza’s code of life. Her only concern was the compensation she had negotiated. Whether the task was a mountain of stone or a desert of shifting sand, it was all the same to her.

In the silence of the room, her fingers were lost in a dance across the keyboard like a master ballerina. Her fingertips pirouetted over the buttons as if they were scattering a melodic tune upon a musical instrument.

On the chessboard of time, a mere two hours now remained for her. After the struggle of these two hours, she was to knock on the threshold of a writer, where her imagination was yet to be molded into the frame of a new 'script.' Alanza’s fingers moved across the keyboard without hesitation, flowing relentlessly, when suddenly Mary…observing her tireless labor…offered a cup of coffee to express her gratitude.

When Alanza finally lifted her gaze, she noticed that Mary had already changed her clothes. A faint, enigmatic smile began to play upon Alanza’s lips.

'No, there is no need for that. You have already settled my payment.'

Alanza spoke with such chilling finality that the words Mary was about to utter died on her tongue. Before Mary could strike another chord of gratitude or insistence, Alanza dismissed her with an abrupt, sharp gesture. Mary departed in silence.

Her fingers danced across the keys one last time, and with a decisive tap on the 'Send' button, Mary’s entire future was surrendered to the electric currents. Alanza glanced at the watch strapped to her wrist; the hands were sounding the arrival of three o’clock, and her allotted time was slipping through her fingers like grains of sand. In a blur of movement, she snatched up her bag, adjusted her hat, and…abandoning herself to the mercy of fate…bolted from the room with lightning speed.

After a thirty-minute journey, she finally stepped onto the set where the cameras were slated to roll by tomorrow morning. The studio was a vast expanse of towering green walls, a stage waiting for digital worlds to be painted upon it.

Under the sharp glare of studio lights, the floor was a maze of camera tracks and heavy equipment. A massive crane stood poised and ready, its silhouette casting long shadows across the grey concrete.

Everything was in place, yet a heavy tension hung in the air. As she looked down at the papers in her hand, the weight of the moment hit her…several crucial pages of the script remained incomplete, still awaiting the final translation that would bring this entire set to life. Her colleague, the writer whose sudden illness had buried Alanza under this mountain of responsibility, now lay on a cold hospital bed awaiting surgery. Thus, the entire weight of the story had fallen upon Alanza’s frail shoulders.

A fellow writer escorted her to her seat and quietly departed.

It was a sanctuary of profound stillness and enchanting grace. The pristine, ivory walls were a canvas for the golden shafts of sunlight filtering through the expansive window…a light that seemed to perform a frantic, fevered dance upon the surface. Before her stood a desk of simple elegance, shadowed by a bookshelf laden with volumes that stood like silent witnesses to a world of intellect and art. In one corner, a vibrant green plant breathed, the solitary pulse of life in that hushed atmosphere.

Alanza drew a long, lingering breath. She took a single sip from the crystal glass upon the table, seeking to quell the rising heat within her, and pried open her laptop. Once more, she surrendered herself to the incantation of words, slipping into that enchanted realm where the shackles of time no longer existed.