Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite, Deirdre C. Amthor Page A

him die just yet.
    He’d started using heroin ten years ago, back in San Francisco, when he was Tran’s age: snorted some at a party, loved the rush and the ensuing lull, the longest period of utter calm his mind had ever known. He went back for more, eventually started putting it in his arm instead of up his nose. The rush was purer that way, the lull longer and far sweeter. It turned out he had a heroin metabolism. A habit tended to sap a normal person’s vitality, as if a tiny droplet of the life force were siphoned off by the needle each time. Steady use of heroin would kill most people eventually. But certain systems drew strength from it.
    He had kicked for a while around the time he met Tran, three years ago. No methadone self-deception for Luke; justthe frigid sweats, the crawling itch, the nausea that boiled like red worms in his gut. You can use one substance to cure your addiction to another, he told himself as he clutched his bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the aftermath of junk sickness, but the new substance should be something different entirely. Something to take your mind off the desire that still pours through your veins. Methadone was a rubber sex doll; whiskey was a brand-new lover.
    So what should he use now, Luke wondered, to cure his addiction? Tran was in his veins sure as the memory of the needle, in his tissues sure as the ghost of junk sickness. Nothing touched the deep, slow ache that came to him whenever he remembered being in bed with Tran, fucking or talking or just memorizing each other’s face as obsessively as two lovers ever had. Tran’s eyes were difficult to think about, too. Luke remembered how they would take on the golden cast of the afternoon light, and the liquid blackness of the pupils, and the feel of delicate skin against his lips when he kissed the subtle, perfect curve at their inner corners. Oh yes, he knew how to torture himself with memories.
    He turned off the water, dried his scrawny body with a threadbare towel, dragged himself out of the bathroom and sank into the ugly vinyl armchair. An ancient burn hole from someone’s cigarette nipped at the back of his leg. There were days when he had to rest after doing anything: showering, walking half a mile down the highway to the McDonald’s or Popeye’s, even reading the paper. Apparently this was going to be one of those days.
    Since he’d gotten on the subject of memories, Luke decided to treat himself to a flashback. He was doing this more and more these days, reliving vivid moments from his past. Often they had to do with Tran, and since the good moments were exquisitely painful to recall, he usually chose the bad ones.
    Luke leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, and it was December of two years ago. A few days before Christmas, a holiday he’d always found wretchedly depressing anyway.Tran had escaped his family festivities, and they were curled like spoons on the mattress of Luke’s loft. Luke lay with his face pressed into the hollow of Iran’s shoulder, dreamily nuzzling the fine black hair at the his nape, which smelled of sweet gel and sex sweat. Tran was nineteen then, and his hair was much shorter, nearly buzz-cut. The style made his face look fiercely exotic, feral. It also showed off the three tiny silver hoops in his earlobes—two in the left, one in the right—each of which had reportedly driven his parents into new paroxysms of horror.
    Suddenly Tran said without warning, “I’m sorry.”
    Luke knew by now that Tran was prone to disjointed interjections, often in belated response to a conversation he’d been having hours or days ago. But for some reason, this meek
I’m sorry
set off a warning bell in his head. “For what?” he asked.
    Tran didn’t answer, and a shrieking klaxon joined the bell. Luke propped himself on one elbow and used Tran’s sharp hipbone as a handle to roll him over none too gently.