❝Aren't you scared at all doing this?❞
❝No, I love taking pictures of them dead.❞
[WARNING: may contain graphic contents, and dark and mild sexual themes.]
|ON-HOLD|
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Wearing a black long dress is something unacceptable and never easy for me. Grief and sadness absorbed my mind while I adjust the corset around my waist in silence and straightening the long sleeves on my arms. The newspaper placed at the hairdresser beside me catches my peripheral vision with the year 1880 and below the large headline written: Rising fame of an unknown serial killer strikes again after an aristocrat young man found dead.
"Claire?" A feminine voice called my given name. I turn my head to see my mother with brooding eyes and clasped two hands over her lower abdomen at the entrance to my room. She jerked her head in sideway, signaling me to follow her downstairs and join for the post-mortem photo taking.
Father met us afterwards and instructed me to take a seat on the couch. Meanwhile, my parents were standing still behind us as my mother rested her hand to my shoulder. Eyes lowered to the ground and avoiding my gaze to the body beside me.
"Could the parents please move a bit closer?" A male's soft spoken voice prompted my parents to oblige what was asked.
"And you miss," I lifted my gaze and see a smiling young man with an elongated camera on a wooden tripod next to him. My eyes lingered to the dimples appeared both on his cheeks and I find them quite attractive. Never thought a post-mortem photographer can be this handsome and have a youthful appearance.
"Will you face your body a little bit of angle towards to your brother?" His favor broke my trance from admiring his features. I slowly shifted my sitting pose diagonally and faced my dead older brother; sitting emotionless with protruding blank eyes.
Mixed emotions of sadness and awkwardness were welling up within me for keeping a stare to my brother for very long minutes in a stiff position. I glanced to the photographer already hiding inside a black cloth attached to the camera. Taking a photograph takes a long period of time indeed for the sake of exposure and capture us perfectly. For this occasion, it is a common practice in this era to take a photo with the recent deceased loved ones to keep as remembrance and valuable possession for the family.
"Alright, you can move now." The young photographer announced as he uncover himself from the cloth. I breathe out and stretched my arms before I quickly left the couch while both my parents immediately approached him.
"Thank you Mr. Jung for taking the memento of us with our precious son I-never expect he would be murdered so young." My mother let out a wail as she wiped a tear using a white cloth from her eye.
"It's my pleasure Mrs. Lee, you have my condolences." A weak smile formed on his lips and he patted her quavering shoulder. After that, my father and the photographer shook their hands and parted on good terms before my parents retreated the scene.
Not long, I was unknowingly observing him putting his camera back to a case box as beads of sweat rolling down on his well-defined jawline. My feet involuntarily walked near him to ask something out of sheer curiosity.
"Aren't you scared at all doing this?" I asked.
He looked at me with confusion written on his face but subsequently was replaced by a sly grin and said, "No, I love taking pictures of them dead."
━━━━━━━ 📷
A/N:
For the wondering new readers, yes this fanfiction is set in Victorian Era. I was intrigued when I learned about post-mortem photographs in the net so I got inspired to write this.
