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

stop it.
    His body went rigid. He grabbed my jumper with both hands, shouting inarticulately. Hot bright pain shot through my chest as Dr. Drummond’s incision came open again. I sliced at Sam’s fingers, felt the blade scrape across bone. He made an awful sound halfway between a sob and a scream. I imagined him trying to comprehend what was happening through his alcoholic haze, and I cursed myself for drinking enough to make me clumsy. I’d meant to send him off quick and clean. This was no better than butchery.
    I grabbed the collar of Sam’s coat, pulled him toward me as if I meant to kiss him again, and drove his head back against the wall as hard as I could. It sounded like a ripe melon landingon marble and left a dark smear on the tiles. A thin, beery stream of vomit bubbled out of his mouth.
    I met his gaze steadily as I slammed his head into the wall again, trying not to let my face contort, trying not to look angry or cruel. Most likely he was past knowing anything. But if he could still see me, I wanted him to know I wasn’t doing this because I hated him. Quite the contrary. Before, I had only seen him as a means to an end. But in these final moments of his life, I loved him.
    I told him so as I pushed the scalpel into the soft spot just below his left ear. His eyes were alight with pain and dread—two emotions I always regretted seeing under such intimate circumstances—but they had already begun to fog. Warmth soaked my fingers, trickled over my wrist, pooled in the crook of my arm.
    Sam’s head fell back. A great wet red mouth yawned in his neck. For an instant its edges were a pristine delineation of tissues, a perfect cross section of his throat’s various layers. Then it disgorged a solid torrent of blood, painting the stall, raining into the toilet, drenching Sam’s face and the front of his coat. I thrust him to one side and barely got out of the way.
    His dying body crumpled into a corner of the stall, wedged in between the wall and the toilet. His face was a red slick, featureless, blind. He was nothing but particles now, if he had ever been anything more. I had only altered the speed at which his particles were vibrating. Nothing in the universe had been disturbed.
    I unzipped his trousers and tugged them down, telling myself this was not a foolish waste of time; I was only trying to make it look more like a random sex killing. Such things happened every day. The authorities will be diverted entirely, I thought as I took Sara’s penis in my hand and felt a fresh stickiness. I looked down at the glistening white streak on my palm, like a snail trail in the garden. Sam had liked rough trade more than I’d suspected.
    I brought my hand to my mouth and licked the salt stickiness away. It was bitter, faintly caustic. I thought I detected a coppery trace of Guinness, but that could have been the blood already on my hand. I licked off some of that as well. When I stood, my legs were trembling and my head felt too heavy on my neck, but I was careful not to support myself against the wall. I couldn’t touch anything yet.
    I’d drunk too much. I had given Sam a bad death. But none of that could be helped now. I had to clean up and get out of this place. If anyone else came in, I would have to kill him too. Today had been the first time I’d killed two men within minutes of each other. I didn’t fancy trying it again so soon.
    I went to the sinks, ran a thin stream of cold rusty-smelling water over my hands, used paper towels to scrub away the rest of the blood. When my hands were dry, I wiped the faucet handle, then put on the rubber gloves I’d taken from the emergency room. I went back to Sam, found the scalpel on the floor under his leg, cleaned it on the hem of his coat, and put it in my pocket. I’d have to get rid of it as well as the gloves before I reached the airport, but I couldn’t leave it here. For all I knew, the hospitals