Lin Bennett

Lin is a 23-year-old Chinese-American woman. She was orphaned at a very young age and since adopted by the Bennetts. Too young to remember them well, she’s always considered her adoptive parents to be her real parents, even after she’d learned that she was an orphan. Lin never got along well with others. That wasn’t for a lack of trying; she was bullied and made fun of by other students for her various quirks and interests.  She liked science and especially biology too much, cut her hair in a weird way, was way taller than a girl should be, dressed like a slob, got into fights too often, etc. Teachers were of little help, and the comfort she got from her parents never made up for the harshness she endured at school. Soon enough she learned that it was easier and more preferable to be by herself.

Despite her inadvertent loneliness, her fascination with other people never waned. She often spent her time at school observing other people; an activity that earned some harsh stares, words, and fights in return. It was always interesting to her how they interacted with each other. This turned into a habit of constantly analyzing others – their language, tone, physicality, expressions, etc. – in order to better understand them. It’s a switch that she has difficulty turning off. Putting this ‘talent’ to use, she’s adept at manipulating people. Knowing which kinds of things can provoke the reactions she wants out of someone is a specialty of hers.

Nowadays, Lin lives by herself in an apartment complex not too far from her parent’s funeral home. She works as a mortician there, one of only a few. Aside from her parents, she’s the main worker, with a rotating cast of additional helping hands. It’s a small business, so there isn’t much need for extra assistance, but they do get their fair share of customers due to the family name. It’s a practice that’s been passed down through generations of Bennetts and as such they have some renown.

From a young age, partially because her parents had raised her with this expectation, she wanted to be a mortician. She wasn’t allowed to work or see with the corpses directly, but her parents spoke to her about the process in detail. When that didn’t sate her curiosity, she turned to books for more information. Her collection of books related to biology, anatomy, and funeral work has grown over the years. There are some fiction novels as well, most of them being murder mysteries.

Lin is enthralled with her work. Now that she works at the home, she finds it challenging and fun to interface with those who come in to attend to their deceased. Deciding whether to be cheery, somber, bittersweet, or whatever else is necessary is always an exciting part of the interaction. What she truly finds joy in, however, is the task of preparing the body to be interred. Embalming and cossetting are her favorite jobs to do. The delicate details of keeping the body “fresh” as well upkeeping the appearance of the corpse are what she finds the most fun in doing. Though her family does have a cremator for those who aren’t interested in traditional burials, she despises it. To her, cremation is a waste of a perfectly good corpse. She does her best to convince any customers that come in requesting cremation services to reconsider.

Outside of work, Lin has a few haunts around town. While she doesn’t have any friends, nor does she intend to make any, she frequents a few bars and nightclubs. There is a cycle of them that she goes through, never enough for people who only hang out at one of them to recognize her as a regular. Having learned from her adolescent days, she takes special care to dress up appropriately in more conventional fashion, with suitable make-up and hair care as well. It’s here that she can continue her hobby of observing people and, when the occasion presents itself, speaking with them. She still has no intentions of making friends with anyone, but it’s good practice and it lets her pick out persons of interest.

Her main other hangout is the local library. She goes there at least once a week, as it is a place where she decompresses. There’s no additional preparation for the library. Lin goes as slovenly and unkept as she likes there, and she doesn’t care. Library trips aren’t for socializing, they’re so that she can find new books or crime documentaries and indulge in them without speaking to anyone.

Lin is a yet to be apprehended serial killer. If you asked her, she would deny that there is a pattern to her victims even though she’s aware of it. They’re normally men that approach her at her usual haunts when she’s all dolled up, usually with romantic and/or sexual interest in mind. She doesn’t go out of her way to seek them out, though attracting them is one of her motivations for dressing herself up, making her a more opportunistic murderer in that sense. However, once she’s made her selection, her process is methodical (a carry-over from her mortician training). She gets them to a secluded location under the guise of going back to her place and kills them at the first opportunity, typically with the switchblade she keeps on her person. (“A girl’s gotta be safe walking around at night by herself!”) There is a concerted effort to keep the cut as clean as can be; excess blood, extending time to death, and worsening the state of the corpse are all things Lin tries to avoid.

Once she has the body, she transports it to her family’s funeral home in the nighttime off-hours. Preparing corpses to be buried is a delicate process, one that emphasizes keeping the body as presentable as possible. That’s all well and good, but Lin’s interest is more in the deformation and “art” she can create with a dead body when she has the freedom to. It’s these opportunities that she makes for herself that satisfy that need in her. Using the equipment at the mortuary, and some of her own implements that she brings, she takes her time messing with her doll in all sorts of fashions. To someone else it would look to be nothing more than mutilating a body, but to her there is an unequaled beauty in her work.

The bodies cannot stay, however, so she resorts to taking pictures of her art.  In-progress shots, final pieces, all of it captured for her private, revisit-able glory. Once she’s done, she thoroughly cleans up the mess left behind (because there’s always a mess) and enters the body in the cremator. No evidence is left behind aside from her own pictures. The ashes are either disposed of by themselves or mixed in with the ashes of cremated bodies, a slight vengeance to those who don’t heed her warning to go with a traditional burial.