Once Upon a Story [ INCONSISTENT UPDATES ]

Corpse Bride

Writing Prompt

❝ I love her.
And all I wish is for her to look at me the way she looks at the bloodied bodies at her feet. ❞
Source: theanniefox.com

This was also inspired by The Anatomy Duology written by Anna Schwartz. Dr. Beecham is her character and the story is set in Edinburgh.

The names Amy-Rose Kaur and Holsden were taken from a name generator.

Trigger warning
The main characters both have a fascination with death. The description of bodies isn't excessive, but some people might be uncomfortable with the way I described the dead. So, reader discretion is advised.

Word count: 1882

The year was too early for medical advancement to advance legally. It was a time that most called mysterious and filled with magic despite the growing place of science in the world. It was an era where the unthinkable was created and the unspoken seen. It was where the men gathered to pledge themselves to the supposed betterment of mankind.

It was the millennium in which came a man, Sébastien Claudel, a renowned French doctor, a man of science, as they called them. To the French, he was gallant, "un homme a bras de fer", as they would say. One who couldn't be shaken by anything or anyone. To the English, he was respectable, most honourable and quite the charmer among women (according to said women's account).

As night veiled the city of Edinburgh, Sébastien veiled his reason. Twilight was his time of madness and unsolicited adventures. It was his hour of glory, alone in his personal morgue with rows upon rows of beautiful specimens: the elderly for their brittle bones and inflamed joints, the adults for their vigorous muscles and robust hearts, and let's not forget the children, carefully collected for their enviable youth. They were the ones he valued as most precious and took greater care to preserve them.

He looked upon each one with macroscopic fascination, taking them apart in his mind. He felt his euphoria explode when his scalpel made the first cut, entering the preserved flesh. Focused solely on his dissection, even the world's end wouldn't rouse him till he completed his work.

"Good evening, Doctor." His lips rose into an imperceptible smirk. He carefully removed his scalpel, etched deep in the body's arm and took care to close the wound he created. With practice effort, the area was cleaned and sterilized. As he faced his guest, his footsteps echoed on the floor.

"Good evening, dear."

There stood a woman dressed in a soft blue dress with a bag slung across her shoulder and an even bigger charge on the floor by her feet. Her pale features matched that of a sheltered child and her thin hands seemed they'd never held anything heavier than the cutlery on her table. Born crying tears of gold, Helen Amy-Rose Kaur was her mother's only daughter, and thus, pampered from birth.