The nauseating smell of decaying detritus wafted through the poorly ventilated room, but elicited no responses from the lone boy scrubbing diligently at an object. He was seated stiffly on a prudish little chair that stood straight before a table that was covered with an object of art – A beast. Taemin placed the dripping cloth he held between his fingers gently on the glistening coat of the beast and lightly brushed it across the expanse of the fur. A smile of pure adoration began forming on his moist, scarlet lips as his fingers grazed past the smoothness of the coat. “Beauty,” He whispered; admiration clearly evident on his face. “Beauty is love.”

             The tiger lay serenely on the table, as though enjoying a slight siesta. Taemin’s eyelids drooped forward slowly and he observed the lifeless beast narrowly, through the slits of his eyes. He tenderly wrapped his fingers around the open, lower jaw of the tiger and felt the sharpness of the tiger’s incisors; the sharpness that proved to be futile to save the majestic beast from the bullet of the huntsman and the knife of the taxidermist. Taemin gently brought his own enigmatic visage close to the nodding head of the immobile creature and gazed affectionately into the tiger’s inert eyes. His fingers travelled upwards and caressed the fur that was stretched across the pinched cheeks of the tiger. To Taemin, the tiger was beauty and beauty had to be treated reverently. He nudged the gigantic paws of the humongous beast with his playful nose and rested his chin on the tiger’s fleshy, firm back. He the silky fur that adorned the beast’s body gently. “You’re beautiful.” He conveyed this soft message to the deceased beast.

               Taemin then leisurely extending a single arm and curled his fingers around the handle of one of the many threatening knives he owned. He the flat portion of the blade, inwardly going over the many other beauties he had preserved. “You’ll be beautiful forever.” The tiger couldn’t care less. The knife remained firm in the boy’s grip; there was no faltering, no wavering, just pure knowledge and love. Taemin placed the knife over the majestic fur of the beast and positioned it to slice away. Then slowly, savoring each moment with a sort of sadistic pleasure, Taemin began slitting apart the only splendor of the beast; it’s glorious coat. Taemin worked slowly, but with a precision that seemed almost unnerving to spot in a boy who had just turned eighteen. But, then again, he did have a lot of practice. This was all he had done since his childhood.

                  The tiger refrained from resisting this appalling degeneration of its body; not out of good will, but out of compulsion. After all, it had no life left in it to resist. Without the vitality of life abounding in its blood, the tiger was just like any other weak being that life had forsaken and Death had embraced. The glassy eyes of the dead tiger were devoid of emotions and the huge claws on its paws were worthless without a driving force to operate them. The knife travelled gently beneath the tiger’s coat, silently tearing away from the tiger, its mystic. Taemin lifted the heavy skin nimbly off the beast and placed it ever so tenderly on the floorboards. The large cavity of the shorn body of the tiger now began decaying rapidly once exposed to air. Taemin wrinkled his white nose in utter disgust and forcefully kicked aside the ugliness. To Taemin, beauty was all that mattered. He was inhuman in some ways, but he was an artist. An artist of beauty tolerates no repulsiveness. The decaying internal organs rolled over the flooring and joined the others in the corner that had been wrenched out of similar beautiful creatures. Outward appearance was everything to Taemin. The insides could rot – quite literally.

              Taemin was conventional in some ways. He cared not for the new generation tools and suction equipments that made it so easy to perform his job. He preferred doing it all by hand, because according to him, beauty had to be handled with care and only human artistic fingers were dexterous enough to give it that value it warranted. Taemin now gazed dotingly at the striped skin of the tiger that lay sprawled on the flooring. He lightly pressed his own body down on it and fondled the silky fur and the creased ears. “I’ll admire you today, agile beast. I’ll admire your shorn grandeur and tomorrow I’ll preserve you for posterity.”

               The entire night he spent resting on the soft expanse of the shorn fur of the beast of the jungle. He passed the night in holy reverence, crooning songs of adoration into the ears of the creature. He ran his fingers repeatedly over the orange fur and inhaled wholesomely, the slightly pungent odor that emanated from the skin of the beast. That night was the night of the tiger; that night was the night that the beast would be worshipped with such veneration that would place it leveled with God. The tiger would be honored that night but would never know that it had been, because its own life had forsaken it long before its adulation began.

               Taemin was strange in more ways than one. He had none of the usual crazes of teenage that normally thrived in the blood of the mentioned tribe. He was all of eighteen, but had never set foot into high school. In fact, Taemin had abstained from visiting a myriad of places; or to rephrase it, he had never set foot outside his house. He was an artist; an admirer of symmetry and a protector of beauty. And the one thing that stood out from all his queerness was the simple, eerily analogous verity that he was beautiful. None of the other vast array of words in the Queen’s language could even hope to describe the façade of that angel of Death. Pale, white, fair skin stretched gracefully across the subtle jaw line and the immaculate curve of the chin. Two bordering portions of tender, pastel pink lips delicately interspersed the beauty of his countenance with fragile drops of blush. The bridge of his nose, restrainedly curved, seemed to add a tinge of imperfection to the otherwise perfectly crafted being. The flaw, rather than creating a blemish of ugliness, somehow seemed to amplify the enchantment of this enticing boy.

             His probing brown eyes seemed to gaze into an undefined depth with an asperity that was chilling. His russet spheres that swam in the milky ocean of his moistened eyes seemed to strike the onlooker immobile. The minor portions of skin that enveloped around his abstruse eyes crinkled ever so slightly at the sharp corners of his eyes. The upper portions of his eyes were curved with an arch that was wondrous in its contour, but the edges of his slightly lined skin radiated more affection. His form was lithe with prominent portions of bones jutting out of the smooth, unblemished skin. The light torso that rose beneath the enticing façade seemed to be all of precision. A pair of slender, overly perfect legs followed the periodically rising torso. Lee Taemin was beautiful, but he wasn’t without his flaws. The only difference that set him apart from other individuals was that his imperfections abetted his striking looks. Lee Taemin’s imperfections were beautiful.

             Taemin strode over to the hardened mould of the tiger he had so lovingly separated from its skin the previous day. In his arms were placed the heavy skin of the beast of the jungles. The skin spilled out from the edges of his bony arms and lingered before his wavering body. He buried his nose slowly in the fur and brushed it against the softness before draping it over the mould he had created the earlier day. The mould had come out perfectly. He adorned the grid, swathing each portion accurately with the corresponding portion of skin. His artistic temperament, his lust of beauty and his passion for precision propelled him to place the skin ever so flawlessly on the rigid framework of the tiger. A few frowned brows, creased scowls and faint swearing later, Taemin took a light step backward and wiped aside a little bead of perspiration running down the face of his cheek. He paused to admire his handiwork and gave his own self a simple pat on the back, happy with the results of his labor. Then, he pulled towards him, his favored austere wooden chair and seated himself on it. Then, he diligently began sewing together the creature, silently recreating the lifeless beast.

           Taemin was an artist; an artist of a mindset that couldn’t be comprehended by the ones of normality. He was a taxidermist – a re-creator of the dead, corrector of flaws and a preserver of beauty. Although he was different in terms of his profession, his strangeness didn’t end there. He fostered one more passion, a yearning to own beauty. He was practiced in profession, so much so that he began to regard himself as a beautifier, a gatherer of loveliness. Each person occupying this earth cultivates his own hobby and every person desires to accumulate a collection of their own favored items. Sometimes cards, sometimes stamps, sometimes coins. Taemin had a little collection of his own too; a collection of beauties. Merely an arm’s length away from his bleak room of work wherein lay all his equipments of taxidermy, a myriad of eerily alive entities hounded a majestic room - His hall of beauty.

             The hall was decorated tastefully; a stark contrast to his otherwise dull existence. Because therein lay all his life’s works, the undying results of his labour. Therein lay the beauty, majestic beings stood straight and alert on every spare portion of this hall. They watched the scarce visitors with hostile eyes, as though grudging them for their ability to walk. The being; animals, birds, amphibians, all rested on the hard, cold floor as frozen as their own lives. These beings were beautiful in the eyes of their owner and that’s why he granted them the wish of immortality. Taemin oftentimes placed his slender body on the cold floor and lay amidst the beauty he had preserved for himself, because, appearances were magical, but life degenerated the magic out of them. Death was much more practical; it never failed to freeze beauty. The hall was adorned with beings so stately that one wondered if they weren’t really alive. But, they never could be, because Taemin maintained that mortals were beautiful, lifeless.

              Even as the hall swam before an ocean of perfect immortality, a gaping space at the very heart of the hall seemed to emanate an air of clairvoyance. That particular spot was reserved for a beauty so powerful, so flawless and so enticing that it would head the others in his collection. Taemin had a sort of firm assurance that such a beauty would soon enter his life. And when it did, he would stop not a minute before adding it to his prized collection. It would then remain conserved forevermore, beautifully lifeless.

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Hello! The first chapter of this fanfic is finally up! I really want to thank all those lovely readers who subscribed to this fic even when only the foreword was up!  
Khairinasaysrawr              tweet226             mdallas71          NeverStopTheNoise            FreakLikeMe0727              bobateahee

I'm really happy you guys subscribed simply because it helps me move on with the story! I love you people! <3
Also, special mention to caline, although she's unsubscribed now, her comments down below really motivated me to continue! So, lovely readers, here's my story! Comment and subscribe. Thanks! =D

You know, this chapter can be concised to a few words! As my amazing Penpal puts it, ' amazing angsty Taemin that was attacking a tiger with a scalpel'. xDDDDDD