Exquisite Corpse

by Poppy Z. Brite

  “What?” Jay asked, a little annoyed, wishing the kid would start making sense. Spaciness was attractive to a point, but manic hysteria was less so.

  “Oh … my filial disgrace … my rising corpses … the poison in my blood. Take your pick.” Tran laughed again. The sound was eerie, childish, detached. “I got kicked out of my parents’ house this morning. My dad found out I’m gay and thinks I have AIDS.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not last time I checked.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is … nobody loves me now.” He scowled at the pathos of his own words, tucked a glossy lock of hair behind the multipierced curve of his ear. “I mean, I have nowhere to go. I thought …”

  “You thought what?”

  “Don’t you sometimes …” Tran looked helplessly at Jay, who refused to help him out. He was rather enjoying the naked hope in Tran’s eyes. “I had the impression you took in visitors.”

  “Well, I suppose I do. Sometimes. But usually they’re out-of-town visitors, and they don’t stay long.” Jay considered his next words carefully. He was still determined to leave Tran alone. But if he let Tran stay overnight, he was sure to get some good photographs. Just possibly they would jack off together, but Jay would keep his hands to himself no matter what.

  “Do you want to visit me?” he asked.

  “Yes. Very much.” Tran smiled that heartbreaking smile again. Then, in one fluid movement, he slid off the love seat and landed on Jay’s lap. “I’ve wanted to visit you for a long time,” he said, and covered Jay’s dry lips with his own.

  Jay was caught utterly off guard. By the time he realized what was going on, his hands had locked behind Tran’s back and their tongues had melted together like warm chocolate. His sore cock twitched and chafed against the inside of his zipper. Tran’s fingers brushed it, paused, then moved more purposefully. Jay’s moan was part arousal, part pain, part thwarted resolve. He slid his right hand up under Tran’s shirt and along the silken ridge of his spine, dipped his left hand beneath the waistband of Tran’s leggings, and fingered the downy cleft of his ass.

  Tran broke the kiss to suck in air. His eyes glittered with hectic emotion. His lips were wet, and curved in a faint smile. The pink tip of his tongue flickered out, tasting their mingled saliva.

  The song on the radio ended and the DJ’s voice filled the room, low, hoarse, and hostile. “Now that one … that one’s for my lost love, wherever he is. Are you out there, are you listening, do you still hate the sound of my voice? I guess I’ll never know. Here’s another one for you, my little heartworm.”

  In the instant before Tran’s body went stiff in his arms, Jay didn’t know whether he wanted to split this boy open slowly or just throw him on the floor and dive in. But suddenly Tran was off Jay’s lap and hurtling across the room, yelling an unintelligible curse, snapping off a sultry female singer in mid-phrase.

  “YOU FUCKER!!!” Tran shrieked at the ceiling. “WHY NOW? WHY HERE? HOW DID YOU FIND ME?” He raked mad claws through his hair, unraveling his ponytail, pulling strands into his stricken face. “My life …” Now he appeared to be hyperventilating. “… is …” He crashed to his knees on the Chinese rug, sending a subliminal shiver through all the glass and crystal in the room. “… SO … FUCKED … UP!”

  He sprawled on the rug, sobbing. Jay had no idea what to do. He had seen plenty of boys cry before, but only at his own behest. He watched, dumbfounded. Eventually Tran’s shoulders stopped convulsing; the deep raw sobs quit wrenching their way out of his gut; he rolled onto his side and lay curled in a semifetal position, facing away from Jay. Against the rug’s red-and-gold pattern, his hair had the black luster of obsidian.

  If Jay sat on the floor beside him, Tran would allow him to run gentle fingers through that heavy mass of hair, to lick the tears from his face, to undress him and have him right there on the floor, rug burns and all. Jay knew this as surely as he knew human anatomy. But he couldn’t make himself do it, not after a display like that. Tran had revealed himself to be unpredictable, and unpredictable people were dangerous.

  So he sat in his chair, still feeling Tran’s phantom weight on his thighs, and he let his mind wander. It wandered naturally to the things he had done last night, and by the time Tran spoke, Jay had nearly forgotten he was there.

  “I’m sorry,” said Tran softly. Then, rolling over on his back and fixing his eyes on the ceiling: “No, fuck it. I’m not sorry at all. I’m sick of apologizing to everyone for stuff I have no choice about. I came here hoping you’d let me cry on your shoulder, maybe take my mind off my troubles with a good orgasm.” He tilted his head to look at Jay. Jay watched him, but did not speak or move, and after a moment Tran continued. “But I knew I was gonna lose it sooner or later. See, ever since spring of this year, nothing in my life has made any sense at all. The guy whose voice you just heard on the radio, he’s the reason why. He was my boyfriend for a year and a half. My first boyfriend. My first lover. Then he …” Tears threatened again, but Tran swallowed them; Jay could hear them going down the smooth passage of his throat. “He got sick. And he tried to kill me.”

  This stirred Jay out of his torpor. “He tried to kill you?”

  “He tried to inject me with his blood.” Tran hitched in a deep breath, then blew it out. “We used to shoot up heroin together. No big deal, just a couple times. We’d stopped by the time our HIV tests came back. His was positive, and mine … wasn’t. We were always real careful. But I woke up one day and he’d gotten his works out … and drawn a syringe of blood from his arm … and he was about to jab it into me.

  “I just looked at him, and I said, ‘Luke, what are you doing?’ and he said, ‘I want you to love me forever,’ and then he started to cry. I was afraid to reach out to him because he still had the needle in his hand. So I just sat there and watched him cry. After a while he let me take it away from him. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I put it in an empty Coke bottle, the kind with the screw-on top, and I sealed up the neck with black electrical tape. I’ve still got it.”

  “Why?” Jay asked, though he was sure he knew.

  “Because it was his. It was almost the last thing he gave me. I couldn’t just throw it out. And because it’s toxic waste.”

  “You never know when you’ll need a weapon.”

  Tran acknowledged this with a small smile. “Luke always kept a razor in his boot. After he got sick, he said if anyone fucked with him, he’d slash his wrist and throw blood in their eyes.”

  “Would he have done it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Jay didn’t know how to follow that up, so he said nothing. After a moment Tran said, “I guess you’re wondering why I ever got involved with him.”

  “No, not really.”

  Tran didn’t seein to hear. “I used to tell myself he wasn’t always like that, that he changed after he got sick. But it isn’t true. Luke was always crazy. There was always this undercurrent of violence in him. He’s a brilliant writer, a brilliant talker. He always knows how to make things sound good. But even before he tested positive, every day of his life, he was pissed off at the world. He used to say he wished he could wake up one day and not be angry—just for one day. But he couldn’t.

  “Now he has this pirate radio show. That happened after we broke up, so I don’t know where they do it or who the other people are. But he’s the one everybody knows about. He calls himself Lush Rimbaud. I hear people around the Quarter talking about him, and I’m scared to say anything in case they realize who it is. Sometimes he advocates killing people, killing straights. Breeders, he calls them. Politicians, evangelists and stuff—but regular people too, anybody who pisses him off. The FCC would go after him in a second. I don’t want him to get busted. I don’t want him to die in prison.”

  “You still care?”

  Tran thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah. I don’t ever want to see Luke again, but I care what happens to him. He’s the smartest
person I’ve ever met, and the only one I’ve ever been in love with. I’d like him to have a good life … but all I can wish him now is a decent death.” A decent death. The phrase struck Jay as odd. He supposed all the deaths he delivered were flagrantly indecent, yet that was why he enjoyed them. These were unusual thoughts for him. He spent most of his time planning how to get boys, engaging them in slow torture until they died, then playing with their components and reliving the details. But he seldom dwelled on his motivations. It was simply something he needed to do, had needed to do most of his life, had been doing for nearly ten years now. Sometimes the craving increased, and he had to have two or three in as many weeks. Sometimes it calmed, and for months he would take boys’ pictures and let them leave unharmed with money in their pockets. But sooner or later the need returned, and for a long time all his guests became permanent residents.

  Tran stood up and stretched. Between the hem of his shirt and the band of his leggings, Jay saw a smooth hollow of golden, hairless skin. He thought of pressing his lips to that hollow, teasing it with his tongue, then sinking his teeth in and ripping until he tasted blood, rich steaming meat, the jellied essence of life. The urge flared in his belly, sucked at his innards, made his testicles crawl. He did not move, barely dared to breathe.

  “Do you mind if I wash my face? I must look awful.”

  Jay managed to speak through rigid lips. “Down the hall.”

  Tran left the room. The urge abated a little. Jay felt a sharp pain in his hands, realized he had curled them into fists and was digging his nails deep into the palms. He rubbed his eyes, dabbed sweat off his forehead and upper lip. Just what is going on here? he wondered. This was the most dangerous guest he’d ever allowed in his house. Tran’s parents might have kicked him out this morning, but they could easily be looking for him in a few days, if not a few hours.

  The craving to possess such a beautiful creature was unavoidable. But listening to Tran’s anguished story, Jay had almost found himself liking the kid. No one had ever talked so honestly to him before. He’d had boys who trusted him unquestioningly out of stupidity, desperation, or both. He’d had boys who were openly suspicious of him from the moment they made contact until the moment they lost consciousness. But no one had ever weighed the options and made a conscious decision to trust him the way Tran seemed to have done.

  Tran hadn’t treated Jay like an easy trick or a potential sugar daddy, as most of the boys did. He had acted as if he were in the company of a friend. Jay had never had a live friend before, and he wasn’t sure what to do with one. All his childhood playmates had shied away early, forced by their mothers to include him because he came from a good Uptown family, but always wary and frequently cruel.

  His guests turned into friends after they were dead, but those friends were fathomable: they would always belong to him, because they could never leave. A living person had the option of walking away. Mummified heads and bleached bones couldn’t even dream of such disloyalty. All Jay’s boys became part of him. They would be with him forever, flesh of his flesh, loving him from the inside.

  He sat quietly and waited for Tran to return.

  Tran splashed cold water on his face and let it drip while he stared at himself in the huge mirror above the sink. Jay’s bathroom was decorated entirely in black-and-white squares, tiny ones on the walls, big ones on the floor. The counter, sink, towels, shower curtain, and Jay’s toothbrush (draining in a crystal glass) were black; the toilet and tub were of spotless white porcelain. The bottom of the sink was lightly beaded with water, but not so much as a stray hair sullied its gleaming surface. The bathroom contained no reading material, no visible grooming products except a bar of white soap, a roll of white toilet paper, and a matte-black shampoo bottle.

  Tran thought of the family bathroom back home, its counter littered with his various hair products, skin potions, stray eyeliner pencils, and the twins’ bubblegum-flavored sparkle toothpaste. There were colorful towels, discarded T-shirts and underwear, an old foam cooler full of his brothers’ tub toys in the corner. It looked decidedly lived in. But Tran could see no indications that a human being used this bathroom every day.

  There were three drawers beneath the sink. Tran slid them open one by one. The top drawer contained toothpaste, a safety razor and a pricey-looking tube of shaving gel, a silver brush and comb, scissors, a deodorant stone. The middle one was empty. In the bottom drawer was a Ziploc bag full of something soft and multicolored. When Tran picked it up, he realized it was human hair of all shades and textures, some obviously dyed. He put it back hurriedly, feeling as if he’d stumbled onto a seedy secret.

  There was a cabinet tucked away beneath the sink too, its edges flush with the rest of the wood, barely visible. He slipped his fingers into the recessed groove of its handle and it whispered open. Inside was a bucket full of water that smelled vaguely of disinfectant. Immersed in the water were several evil-looking sex toys: fleshy pink and glossy black, jellied latex and molded plastic, double-headed, double-pronged, ribbed, nubbed, and flared. After the bag of hair, the shock value of these was minimal. Still, Tran couldn’t help but imagine Jay using one of the toys on him, murmuring in his ear, stroking the curve of his back, working the strange shape deep into his intestine.

  He rinsed his mouth out with Jay’s toothpaste and left the bathroom. Across the hall was the bedroom, a few candles flickering in its shadowed depths. He could see little more than an expanse of gleaming hardwood floor and a very large bed. As he came back down the hall, he noticed the arched entry way to the kitchen on his left. It too was dark, but looked as spotless and shiny as the bath.

  He reentered the parlor, where Jay sat as rigid and motionless as Tran had left him. The candles bathed his face in golden light. The smoke from the incense sticks swathed his head and upper body, made him look ethereal. His face in profile was as sternly serene as an angel’s. Tran wanted to go to him, sit with him, continue what Luke had interrupted. But he couldn’t make himself do it; he had no idea what Jay had thought of his outburst, or whether he was even welcome here.

  He leaned against the doorjamb. Sudden shyness rose in his throat, threatened to choke him. “Do you still want me to pose for you?” he asked, so softly he wasn’t sure Jay had heard him at first.

  Jay stirred, but did not look at Tran. “No … not just now.”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “That might be best.”

  Not for me, Trau thought. His heart sank; his balls ached. The bathroom had creeped him out a little—not the strange items in the drawer and cabinet so much as the total sterility of it, the difficulty of believing a man washed, shaved, crapped here every day. He’d heard the word on the street about Jay: the guy was an odd, cold fish; he would suck you off without ever looking you in the eyes; his house smelled funny. He was said to be very rich, with all the accompanying eccentricities. But Tran didn’t care about that. The few times he’d spoken to Jay, he had sensed an aura of power under wraps, of utter control. This man would find out his deepest desires, and would be capable of twisting them into pain as well as pleasure.

  He’d experienced a similar certainty when he met Luke, and he had been right. But while Luke’s power was alpha-male raw, Jay’s seemed infinitely refined.

  He didn’t want to leave. He wasn’t sure he could stand to be turned out of an other place today. The picture of himself nestled in the pale curve of Jay’s arms, sated with sex and ready for sleep, had sustained him for so long that now he could not imagine spending the night any other way.

  Feeling like a manipulative little shit—an epithet Luke had once blessed him with—Tran stepped in front of Jay’s chair, unbuttoned his shirt, and let it whisper off his shoulders onto the rug. He felt Jay’s eyes honing in on his bare chest. “I don’t care if you take my picture,” he said. “I’ll do anything you like. I just want to know you. Please don’t make me go.”

  Jay stood. He was about six inches taller than Tran, and his lankiness
disguised a strong, wiry build. Tran wanted nothing more than to step into Jay’s arms, press his face into Jay’s chest, and wait to be ravished. But Jay only grasped Tran by the shoulders and stared into his face, looking half angry, half puzzled. “What is it you want here? What do you mean, you want to know me? Why?”

  “Because you fascinate me,” Tran told him honestly.

  Jay sighed, let his hands drop, then slowly slid them back up Tran’s bare ribcage. Tran’s skin shuddered into gooseflesh at the touch. He forced himself to remain still, to let Jay do the touching for now. Jay wanted to be in charge, just as Luke always had.

  Jay’s thumbs grazed Tran’s nipples, paused, then traced lazy circles around them. A small ecstatic whimper escaped Tran’s throat. He let his head fall back, offering the smooth line of his throat to Jay in supplication. Jay’s lips fastened on the V of his collarbone, moved up his throat and along his jawline, brushed his mouth. Then Jay pulled back, and his eyes were terrifying in their intensity, flecked with bright candlepoints, hazed with lust so urgent it bordered on pain.

  “You better be ready for whatever happens,” he told Tran. His voice was full of dark promise.

  “Anything,” Tran whispered.

  In the candle-dark bedroom they kicked off their shoes, grabbed each other, and fell roughly onto the bed, wrestling, attacking, surrendering. Jay hooked his thumbs under the waistband of Tran’s leggings and yanked them halfway down. They snagged on Tran’s hard-on, then slipped over it.

  He got his own pants undone, struggled out of them, and rolled on top of Tran, enfolding the boy’s sleek limbs with his clumsy ones. “Your body feels so good,” Tran breathed in his ear. This threw Jay for a second: most boys didn’t talk to him in bed, even when they were still conscious. He didn’t know if he should answer or not.