There’s this chestnut that turns up in lots old movies and TV shows—which probably means it’s total racist bullshit—that primitive people won’t allow their photographs to be taken because the camera would steal their souls. The audience is supposed to laugh at how ignorant and superstitious the natives are. But I’m starting to think they’re on to something because I lost my soul to a photograph. When I went for the job interview, I didn’t expect much. On the one hand, I was overqualified. My old job had been coding imaging software, and I was applying for a job that a monkey could do. On the other hand, I was a big risk. I lost that job, a wife, a kid, and a year of my freedom to alcohol. In jail for eleven months and twenty-nine days, I got sober. Now I needed a job, and this gig sounded good to me. It was low pressure, and I’d be working by myself. The police department had a warehouse of old case files going back decades, and they’d contracted istanbul travesti with a firm to digitize what was still useful and toss the rest.At the interview they asked a lot about what books I read and what TV shows I liked. It finally clicked that they were trying to weed out the true crime buffs and cold case fanatics: aspiring authors, wannabe detectives, creeps who collect crime scene photos. It was clear that my only aspiration was a paycheck and enough work to keep me out of trouble. I got the job.The warehouse was dusty and stank of slow decay. I was set up with a computer, a scanner, and an assortment of shredders and bins for the stuff to be discarded. I’d grab a big cardboard box off the racks, carry it over to my station, and look up the case in the system. If the case was closed and anyone who was convicted had served their term, I would enter “evidence destroyed” on the computer and separate the box’s contents travesti istanbul into the appropriate bins for disposal. I could see why they wanted to weed out the true crime fanatics. The whole process was much faster and more efficient if I didn’t read the documents, look at the photos, or dwell on suck gruesome artifacts as blood-stained knives in plastic bags.If there was still a chance of legal action, I digitized the documents before shredding them and repackaged evidence that couldn’t be scanned.Since I was uninterested in the debris of crime and misery I sifted through, I was very productive . . . until Laura.Her box was unremarkable, just the next dusty cardboard box on the shelf. I looked up the case. Murder, 1974. Victim, Laura Buono, 32. Francis Buono, her husband, convicted and sentenced to twenty-five to life. Francis died in prison in 1993, heart attack. Done and done. I opened the box to sort and toss the contents.And istanbul travestileri there she was.On the top of the pile of documents was a Polaroid photo of a naked woman. I picked it up slowly and stared at it as if compelled to do so. She was standing against the backdrop of hideous green floral wallpaper. Her pose was slightly askew, her right shoulder pushing forward. Her hands were in front of her stomach, as if she was fighting an instinct to cover her breasts. Her skin was pale with random blemishes. Her breasts were each the size that would fill a man’s hand with nipples somewhat off-center. The photo ended at her upper thighs, just below a thick V of black pubic hair.The black hair on her head was short and permed. One curl recklessly plunged over her forehead. It was her expression, though, that caused me to sit and stare at the photo. Her brown eyes were open wide and seemed to plead with the camera, though for what I didn’t know. Her mouth was slightly open and seemed to be strained, lost somewhere between a smile and a scream. There was a complex mixture of emotions on her face. Was she aroused by being photographed? Offended? Was she nervous? Humiliated? All that was there and more.