User:Lpalm1111

Ever since he was young, Richie took a strong interest in fashion design, photography, production- he loved it all. As he grew up, he watched his two older sisters’ fashion develop, watched them style their hair, and he wanted to be a part of all of it. The subtle intricacies of female fashion intrigued him, and he noted every stitch, billow, and hem, every delicate swish of their hair. He felt overlooked and indignant every time he and his immediate family turned up to a gathering or reunion due to the multitude of compliments his sisters received. Over time, he secretly grew increasingly resentful, wishing he could compile praise-worthy outfits of his own. While his sisters grew up and went off to university, Richie vowed to be different and attend fashion school, and notably decided contact with his siblings would no longer be necessary. That brings us to this point in time. 2016, at the height of high fashion. Richie is well known for his craft-- at least in this borough of NYC. Living off of the pay from various catalog shoots and politically themed photography shows, Richie seemed reasonably successful and presumably content. Richie was “making it” in New York, so what was the problem? A dream career, which fulfilled all of his cravings for clothing composition, stage work, photography, and the praise that comes with masterful creation still didn’t solve Richie’s troubles. His “fear” of beautiful women put a small damper on things. A “phobia”. Caligynephobia, to be more specific. It usually stems either from a fear of rejection and interaction based on one's own perceived shortcomings, or the self-concocted-and-indulged belief that women who are more beautiful are also more fake, snooty, and deceitful. Richie had been influenced by his childhood and his own repression. His problem didn’t stem from an inherent flaw in the way he was brought up, as his parents never really expressed any opposition to his formerly secret passion for fashion upon his announcement of his future plans. His sisters, not at all at fault for his repression and subsequent resentment, were perfectly supportive as well. Richie’s inability to reconcile his interests, his gender, and his jealousy of his sisters caused a massive amount of internal confusion. However, he had no idea these emotions would become such an obstacle.

The state of his mental health was consistently deteriorating, not enough for him to take immediate notice, but the kind of slow, creeping madness that only hits one once it is almost too late to remedy the source. Things started out normally- Richie sometimes noticed that he had a hard time tolerating clients for long enough to complete the shoot. Nothing too serious, he felt a twinge of anger, jealousy, or remorse as he looked on while the models got their hair and makeup done. Richie was never the one to fit the outfits to the models he’d hired, as he preferred to keep to himself and opted to hire stylists for his projects and shoots instead. Typically, the most interaction between him and one of his models was through a camera lens. Work kept him busy, and his romantic inclinations confused him as well. Despite being surrounded by perfectly suitable captors and being young and reasonably attractive himself, Richie didn’t feel particularly hard pressed to find romance. For now, he didn’t think much of his weird emotions and negative impulses towards the women he worked with, and chalked it up to residual childhood jealousy. He didn’t think it weird that the notion of interacting with a woman without the facilitation of a photographic device made him sweat and shiver. He was an awkward guy. Over time, troubling dreams began to dance about in Richie’s head. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to escape the emotions and impulses which plagued him in his everyday life during his hectic work day. Formerly, he was able to take solace in his apartment, in his bed, in rest, in his dreams. Sleep was sacred to Richie. When dreams of clients, of women from all around the world, women he had never seen before, all so modelesque, all so feminine, smooth, unattainable. Richie couldn’t figure whether he was meant to be envying these women for their divine beauty and wishing he could be them, or whether he was supposed to have a carnal desire for these women visiting him in his sleep. His internal conflict began to develop into a whirlwind of internal torment. Confusion followed him everywhere, now even in his resting hours. It wasn’t until the dissociative episodes began that Richie even realized and acknowledged his sanity slipping-- and it had already gone. Really, Richie was alerted that something must have changed drastically in his demeanor due to the consistent decrease in traffic that his studio space was getting, and the decreased number of commissions for work he received. He himself knew about his internal conflicts and confusion, coupled with his blatantly teetering sanity, but he didn’t know other people had picked up on it. This had a lot to do with the fact that he was remembering less and less of his days, walking around clouded by his own emotional conflict, slipping in and out of an accurate view of reality. It isn’t necessarily accurate to describe his episodes as hallucinations, but they were delusional fits where he acted in uncharacteristic ways and didn’t remember having said or done anything or gone anywhere at all. Once he started hearing rumors about himself within the fashion community declaring him a lunatic and a stalker, he knew that something was going terribly wrong. With a hush-hush, you didn’t hear it from me, don't shoot the messenger attitude, one of his stylists informed him that he had gotten close to attacking one of the models, according to her-- but he “didn’t hear it from her”, and Richie “didn’t hear it from him”. A claim like this was outlandish, right? Richie didn’t ever interact with the models without a camera as a buffer and a considerable berth between them. How could he have even gotten close enough without remembering? She claimed she had found him in her dressing room, upon which he became wildly defensive.

How much of these claims were hearsay? How much of it was true? How much of it did Richie even remember? He had no clue what happened, and certainly hadn’t heard from that client since. In light of these allegations, business in his photography studio had declined to the point where Richie was living mostly by selling his prints from previous projects.

It was only natural that when a local woman went missing, the rumors only picked up in frequency and severity, unbeknownst to Richie. Hearing about the disappearance on the news, Richie thought very little of it. While sad, he didn’t know the woman personally or have any real connection to her. He figured it was just a typical New York crime, not a wonderful occasion, but certainly to be expected with such a high crime rate. She probably didn’t even disappear from his area, so he felt generally detached from the objectively tragic event. It wasn’t tragic to him, just another good looking young woman going missing. It happens every day.

Or so he thought.

Just before sighing and reaching for the remote to resign to his usual reclusive evening and subsequent night terrors, Richie is caught motionless. Blaring from the TV set, sources claimed the woman in question had booked several different shoots and interviews in the whole NYC area. The notable detail, however, was that Richie happened to be one of the photography professionals she claimed to book a portfolio review with. The media, either by courtesy or by the virtue of ignorance, did not highlight the rumors going around in the fashion community in the city. That is to say, Richie wasn’t being singled out on television as a suspect, he was just included in a list of names of producers, stylists, photographers, studios, and other various entities with which the model worked with or was planning to work with in an attempt to find leads on her whereabouts. Normally this wouldn’t seem so out of the ordinary, just bad luck for a woman he had met briefly. No fault of his own.

In this unique situation, however, Richie was faced with two problems:

Richie didn’t remember scheduling any kind of interview for the day of the disappearance with anyone, not even a hair or makeup stylist. He believed himself to have been at home the entire time, thinking he had slept for most of the day, having stayed up quite late the night before. Racking his brain for any significant detail at all, he drew a blank.

The muffled screams and gags he heard coming from the vicinity of his fire escape which creeped him out a night or two before, and the strange red residue he discovered in his shower that morning.