Background

[[CW: Gore, Death, Body Horror (Decomposition)]] Josephine saw her first corpse when she was eight years old. Her grandmother passed away while she was visiting for two weeks, her parents on an overseas vacation. Not knowing who to call for help or what to do, she spent ten days alone with her grandmother's corpse, watching the woman she loved melt beyond recognition and become home to a writhing swarm. She saw her second barely six months later. It was a man, floating in a tidepool on the shore. He had been there for some time, long enough she didn't even realize what it was and began using a stick to investigate the writhing sea lice and maggots that skittered across the bloated corpse. She only realized the truth when she disturbed the cadaver enough for one of the ragged hands to drift up to the surface. Curious and undaunted, her investigation continued until an adult stopped and realized what was happening. When she was in Highschool, death and the insects were her well-established obsession, and she spent long hours trudging through the evergreen forests behind her home in Newport, OR looking for animal carcasses to study. Her third corpse was a jackpot of a find; the person had been dead for only a few days, allowing her to make frequent visits to the body to study the evolution of the bugs that wormed their way through the putrefying thing. She only reported it once it was rendered near-skeletal, and after filling up near three notebooks with her observations. After that the only corpses she encountered were expected ones in her field of study; to her parent's dismay and even after years and years of therapy, Josephine's obsession just could not be shaken. She started college and pursued forensic entomology. As she progressed her degree and after establishing herself as a medical examiner and coroner, she got involved in the mortuary business as a side hustle to develop eco-friendly methods of burial and help bolster her thesis. After being in school for over a decade, she was close to finishing her dissertation and getting her PHD when she decided she needed some fresh perspective, choosing to travel while she had the time and break outside of her little bubble. Perhaps see some new and different types of insects and corpses in faraway places. As luck would have it, she was on the cruise that would end up diverted to Braddock Island, dooming her doctorate to remaining incomplete.