Exquisite Corpse

by Poppy Z. Brite

  “Oh yeah?” the white cop asked. “How come he ain’t actin’ like he knows you?”

  “Can’t you see something’s fucking wrong with him? Tran, it’s Luke, baby, come on, Tran, look at me …”

  Jay had been supporting most of Tran’s weight with one arm; now he wrapped the other around Tran’s chest, protective new boyfriend confronting psycho-obsessive old one. “He’s fine, Luke. I’ll take care of him. Why don’t you just try to take care of yourself?”

  He saw a flash of pure murder in Luke’s eyes. This man was not someone to underestimate. There was madness there, obvious and gaudy. Jay turned back to the cops and took out his wallet. “Look, do you want to see some ID?”

  “We alr—” The words died on the white cop’s lips. “Yeah. Lemme see your driver’s license.”

  Sleight of hand wasn’t one of Jay’s strong points, but he tried to fold the two hundreds under the license with a modicum of discretion. Luke, of course, missed nothing. “You goddamn filthy crooks. You’d lick this pedophile’s ass for another hundred.” He tried to shove past them, his hands clawing for Tran. The cops moved simultaneously, quick as snakes, pinning Luke’s arms behind him and wrestling him up against the wall. It had to hurt, but his furious expression never changed, and his burning eyes never left Jay’s.

  The white cop bent to speak in Luke’s ear, though he didn’t lower his voice. “You got any more smart mouth to give us, asshole? ’Cause if you do, you get to take a ride in the cruiser with some of our buddies. Now we’re gonna give these gentlemen an escort home, and you’re gonna turn around and walk the other way. Understand?”

  Luke remained silent. The black cop gave his pinned wrists a jerk. “Understand?”

  “No, I don’t understand.” Luke ground his face into the wall. He was nearly sobbing. “I don’t understand how you can find a kid naked and bleeding on the street and give him back to the guy who probably did it to him. I don’t understand how you can take a bribe from that freak and forget about the kid’s safety. I don’t even understand what he’s doing with Jay instead of me.”

  The white cop jammed a knee into Luke’s back. “Faggot, if I hear one more word outta you—”

  “He’s just upset,” said Jay. “Please let him go.”

  The cops, remembering where the grease on their palms had come from, dropped Luke’s arms and stepped away from him. Luke remained against the wall, his face pressed into the cold bricks.

  Jay wanted to get Tran back to the house before he began to come out of his stupor. “Shall we?” he asked. The cops mounted their scooters and puttered off so slowly that even with Tran in tow, Jay was able to stay a few steps ahead of them.

  As his peculiar entourage turned the corner of Royal Street, Jay glanced back over his shoulder. Luke was flattened against the wall, gripping it with both hands, holding himself up by the fissures in the brick. His shoulders heaved convulsively. Jay could still hear his sobs.

  He almost felt sorry for the man.

  Tran awoke to a world of pleasure and pain.

  The last thing he remembered was being out on the street, naked and cold. A hazy memory of Luke’s face tantalized him. Had Luke been there? He thought so, but the whole scene seemed so unreal, a distant nightmare that was quickly eclipsed by the present one.

  His wrists and ankles were tightly bound, and there was a wide strap across his midsection. The restraints felt like greased leather. The surface beneath him was metal, slick and cold. Every breath he took filled his lungs with a hideous smell, something sweetly rancid, worse than fish guts rotting behind a grocery in Versailles. His head hurt dreadfully. The bars of fluorescent light overhead branded themselves into his corneas. He had a hard-on, which was as deep in Arthur’s throat as Arthur’s had lately been in his own. Jay was staring down into his face, blond hair stringy with sweat.

  Tran tried to speak but found his lips dry and swollen. Jay offered him a sip of water from a nearby cup. When Tran lifted his head to drink, his brain throbbed in protest. It felt as if blood vessels were bursting in there.

  The water trickled down his throat, deliciously cold. When it hit his stomach, there was a dazzling burst of pain. He swallowed again and found himself able to speak in a hoarse whisper. “Jay … what are you doing?”

  “Killing you.” A ghost of a smile touched Jay’s lips, but not his pale eyes.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s what we do. And because you’re beautiful.”

  “Have you always done this?”

  “Since I was younger than you.”

  “How … how …”

  “How many? I’ve lost count. How do I do it? Various ways. Is there anything special you want?” He stroked Tran’s cheek with a bony finger, and Tran realized he was absolutely serious.

  “I don’t want to die.”

  Arthur stopped sucking Tran’s cock, raised his head and stared into Tran’s eyes. “You’re lying.”

  “I’ll scream.”

  “We know.” Jay laid gentle fingertips on Tran’s temples, bent and kissed his forehead. “When you get too loud, we’ll gag you.”

  A wave of terror swept over him, threatened to drag him into its mindless depths. They meant it. They meant to tear him up alive, and he was trapped. There was no way out. The only time Tran could remember feeling remotely like this was when he found out Luke had tested positive. That was the first time he had ever really believed he was going to die. Now he found that he did not fear death as much as he feared the pain that would precede it.

  Bile rose in his throat, hot and bitter. Jay saw him choking and forced his head to the side. Thin vomit trickled out of the corner of his mouth onto the table. Jay wiped it away with a damp cloth, then wiped Tran’s sweaty face with another.

  The gesture brought Tran no relief. With his head at this new angle, he was able to see the shelves that ran along the back wall, and their contents. The objects were distorted by perspective and fear, but he could make out bones, flowers and candles, jars with strange floating contents.

  He focused on a single jar, and was barely able to grasp the meaning of what he saw: eyes in bloody water, staring out at him or past him, twenty pairs or more, as large and cloudy as pickled eggs. He realized what the awful smell was. In that moment he knew he was going to die, here and now, though he did not accept it; that would come later, and harder.

  Jay let go of Tran’s head and moved to the foot of the table, beside Arthur. They stood together for a moment, gazing at him. Tran looked back at them with something beginning to resemble awe. They were, after all, his destiny. Luke had tried to claim that role falsely, and failed. These two men had taken it by force, simply because they wanted to. Through his terror, through his sorrow, something in him loved that.

  But it was going to hurt like hell. He knew he probably could not yet conceive of the pain they would put him through before he died. He had no frame of reference for it; up till now the worst pain he’d ever experienced had been a busted ankle in a high school gym class, courtesy of a redneck who liked to call him a commie gook.

  Thinking of school made him think of his family. He imagined how his father would feel when he found out about this: guilty and grief-stricken, yes, but also vindicated in his beliefs. This was the sort of end his father expected him to meet, a dirty painful death … but, for the family, so much faster than watching AIDS devour him in stages. Maybe his father would view Jay and Arthur’s intervention as a stroke of divine mercy, a bifurcated arm of God descending with scimitars to lop off a malformed twig. Tran wondered if he were insane for having these thoughts, wished he were insane, tried to will himself there but could not.

  Hot tears spilled from the corners of his eyes and dripped into his hair. He had never felt so helpless. Surreptitiously he pulled at his restraints, which gave less than half an inch. Jay Byrne knew how to trap a boy so he could never get away. Jay deserved his reputation after all, and more. Tran wasn’t really surprised. But then he wouldn’t have
been surprised to find out Luke had killed somebody, either.

  Now Jay was crossing the narrow room to a rack on the opposite wall, a sturdy metal affair fitted with all sorts of hooks, clamps, and compartments to hold tools. Tran saw an electric drill, an awl, a claw hammer, more screwdrivers, a hacksaw, pliers, surgical implements, an assortment of knives. The stark light made the stainless steel glitter like diamonds. As Jay selected a number of items, Arthur squeezed Tran’s hand reassuringly.

  Jay returned with the tools and set them somewhere out of sight. In his right hand was a single hemostat, scissorslike blades minutely serrated, large enough to clamp an artery or hold a fat joint. He took Tran’s uninjured nipple between thumb and forefinger, rolled it gently back and forth. Even now Tran couldn’t help responding to Jay’s touch. His skin shivered with gooseflesh; his nipple hardened. Jay pinched up the sensitive tissue and closed the hemostat on it.

  This new pain was immediate, intense, and crushing. It robbed him of breath. He knew he could not bear it. But he had to, and worse yet to come. Even as he formed this thought, Jay clamped a second hemostat on his left nipple, the one that had been bitten nearly through. Tran found his breath and shrieked, a desperate sound that ricocheted off the long, low walls.

  “We’d better gag him,” said Arthur. “It’s only going to get worse.”

  “You’re right.” Jay’s hand forced something round and slick into his mouth, smoothed his hair back and fastened something behind his head. Tran tasted latex, felt his tongue being pushed into the shallow well at the back of his throat, scant millimeters from triggering his gag reflex. He wondered if he would choke, then realized it would be a mercy. But he did not choke; he was not blessed by asphyxiation or catatonia; he remained excruciatingly aware of everything.

  Arthur’s strong hands gripped his hipbones; Arthur’s erect cock prodded the cleft of his ass. “Jay, do you mind if I—”

  “Fuck him? Sure, go ahead.”

  “It won’t get in your way?”

  Jay smirked. “Your dick’s not that long.”

  “Oh, aren’t we the clever one!” Arthur’s grinning face hung over him, blue eyes alight. Arthur’s fingers lubricated him, spread him. Then Arthur’s cock was sliding into his damaged rectum, a brand-new world of pleasure/pain unlike anything Tran had imagined, searing, soaring, sickening, teasing his prostate and ripping open his wounds.

  As Arthur fucked him, Tran was aware of Jay unbuckling the wide strap around his middle, allowing him to breathe a little easier. He pulled air in through his nose, rolled his head back and forth on the table. The pain felt as if it were reaching some sort of crescendo, but perhaps it was capable of attaining infinite peaks.

  Jay trailed spidery fingers along Tran’s collarbone, his chest, his ribs. He laid his hand on Tran’s belly and palpated gently, as if testing the ripeness of fruit. Tran felt his organs constricting in dread, cramping under Jay’s palm.

  When he saw the next tool Jay chose, he shut his eyes tightly. Too soon he felt the knife’s tip at the base of his breastbone. Then the long fillet blade was sliding through his flesh, a shuddery cold sensation like the sick shock of a paper cut multiplied a thousand times. At the same moment, Arthur thrust deep into him and ejaculated. The sperm burned like bleach and salt on his torn inner tissues.

  Tran raised his head. Jay had made a long shallow incision from his breastbone to his crotch, neatly parting the skin. Tran could see the layers of fat and muscle beneath. Arthur stood at the foot of the table, his cock and thighs smeared with Tran’s blood, his pubic hair matted with it.

  Jay thrust the knife into the incision again, and Tran’s head fell back. The cold blade twisted inside him, severed some tough membrane with an agonizing crunch, sank into vital softness. Tran heard his own blood pattering onto the table, felt it pooling warmly beneath his back and buttocks. Blood filled his throat, welled past the gag and trickled out the corners of his mouth.

  Jay unfastened the gag and pulled it out. A freshet of blood and bile followed it. Tran coughed, retched, tried to scream. It sounded like someone attempting to gargle boiling water. Jay put the knife down, leaned over and cradled him, kissed his bloody mouth, licked his chin, his throat, his swollen nipples, the edges of his incision. Tran felt consciousness beginning to slip away, merciful blackness fogging his brain at last.

  He was yanked back by the white heat of Jay’s teeth in his belly. Not just in his skin or even his flesh but down in his guts, pushing back the edges and thrusting deep inside, ripping something out of him. The pain was a wire of infinite length vibrating at an unimaginable speed. Rabid jaws churning slippery tubes. Stinking acids of digestion. Meat in Jay’s mouth, dangling, dripping. Arthur feeding from Jay’s mouth, their lips purpled with dark blood, their jaws chewing the stringy flesh in unison. His own dear flesh.

  He saw them through a haze of red. The pain began to recede. He felt dreamy, weightless, very cold. The thought that it was nearly over soothed him like a lover’s touch. Tran closed his eyes and did not open them again.

  The wall started to hurt his face after a while, but Luke couldn’t move yet. The cops’ casual malice, Tran’s indifference, and Jay’s smug command of the situation had paralyzed him.

  At last he felt he could let go of the wall without collapsing. He brushed crumbs of dirt and brick off his wet cheeks, but he could not wipe away his last image of Tran: face bloody and blank, eyes utterly without recognition. Tran had looked straight through him and had not known him. How could that be? Last he’d heard, Tran was scared of him. It didn’t make sense.

  Jay must have done something to Tran; he’d looked drunk and hurt. Maybe Jay was into rough stuff. Tran had never been opposed to a little rough stuff. But maybe this time it had gotten out of hand.

  Luke knew two things: he was still going to find Jay’s place, and he was going to get to Tran somehow, if only to make sure Tran was all right. But he couldn’t go there yet. If Jay had given the cops a large enough bribe, they might cruise by his house a few more times to make sure Luke didn’t turn up. If he did, Luke had no doubt they’d arrest him in a heartbeat.

  He set off in the opposite direction and walked until he saw the muted neon of a bar. It was a suitably dark and sordid place, populated by grizzled old androgynes and a few gaudy creatures who might have been hookers or particularly inept drag queens. Luke’s abraded, tear-stained face caused no comment in this joint. He ordered a double shot of whiskey straight up. The house brand was rotgut. It was what he was used to, and it went down easy, sloshed once around his empty stomach, and melted warmly into his bloodstream.

  Cleaning himself up in the restroom, he noticed that his eyes were bloodshot and his gums a sick grayish-pink. Soren must have been desperate. Was he crazy for imagining Tran could ever want him back? Probably, but it hardly mattered anymore. Now he had a score to settle with Jay as well: for hurting Tran, for humiliating him in front of Tran, for leading Tran away naked in his arms.

  Luke left the bar and walked back up lower Royal Street, checking the finials of each gate. When he saw the cast-iron pineapples, he crossed the street and stood in a recessed doorway to get a good look at the property.

  Built on a wide, deep lot flanked by three-story townhouses, most of it was hidden behind a high brick wall topped with iron spikes and glittering coils of razor wire. Through the bars of the gate he could see one corner of the house, a vaguely Roman affair in whitewashed stone or stucco, the scalloped arches of its porch reminiscent of a mausoleum. The walkway that ran alongside the house to the rear of the property was a black rectangle lit only by the tall wavering flames of two gas jets enclosed in hurricane lamps. Beyond these eerie wisps of light, Luke could see nothing.

  Cautiously he moved to the gate and peered through the bars. The yard was overgrown with ferns, gnarled vines, and a large oak tree, several of whose branches overhung the sidewalk within easy, tempting reach. But there was no way he could go in through the front. He’d already noted the video
camera at the top of the gate. The sides of the property looked equally impenetrable: even if he could somehow get on top of one of the townhouses, the drop into Jay’s yard would kill him.

  He wrapped his hands around the iron bars for a moment, staring into the darkness. It was difficult to leave knowing Tran was in there. At last he made himself walk away from the gate, to the next corner, and around the block to Bourbon Street, which ran parallel to Royal.

  Far from the sleazy tourist drag, this end of Bourbon was closely lined with the well-preserved homes of gay men in their forties and fifties. He found what he hoped was the property directly behind Jay’s. Given the rabbit-warren nature of French Quarter architecture, there might be two or three small buildings wedged in between. But if he was lucky, the two lots would share a back wall.

  The Bourbon Street property was a massive stucco house with an adjoining alleyway to the rear courtyard. The gate leading to the alley was about eight feet high, made of curly wrought iron with lots of boot-sized gaps, topped with twisty little iron spikes that didn’t look particularly formidable. Maybe he could get over it. Maybe, if they didn’t have a motion sensor, or a dog, or …

  There were a million possible obstacles. Luke had to forget them all. He tried the gate to make sure his luck hadn’t suddenly changed. It hadn’t. He took off his leather jacket and swung it over his head, trying to snag its lining on the iron spikes.

  He had to repeat this several times, stopping twice when cars passed. Finally the jacket snagged on the gate and held. Luke tugged it, yanked it hard, let his knees sag until all his weight hung from it. The jacket was caught tight.

  He pulled himself up as quickly as he could, grabbing on to the ironwork, easing himself over the top of the gate, using the heavy leather to protect his hands and his crotch from the spikes. When he was over, he clung to the inside of the gate with one hand and carefully freed his jacket with the other. Then he let himself drop into the alley and waited to feel ravening canine jaws sink into his ass.

  Nothing. No dog, no alarm that he could hear. He crept along the alley, stopped when he reached the cobblestone courtyard. It was softly shadowed by lights at the base of a gurgling fountain, but otherwise dark. There were no other buildings on the lot.