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

marked them.
    I felt inside Sam’s coat and pulled out the brown leather wallet I’d seen earlier. It held a driver’s license issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia, a student ID, three credit cards, a condom, and a sheaf of crisp fifty-pound notes with some smaller bills folded around them. In the same pocket of his coat was a passport folder. The passport had been issued in 1989, and the smiling face in the photo was thinner, the hair shorter, the aspect generally scruffier than that of the well-groomed American tourist I had met tonight.
    I thought I could easily pass for the man in the photo. My name was Samuel Edward Toole, and I hailed from a place called Charlottesville. I kept the entire wallet. The less identification was found on Sam, the more it would look as though he’d been murdered and robbed. Which of course he had. Upon reflection, I took the black plastic Swatch from his wristand fastened it around my own. Sam may have considered time a relative concept, but I had to catch the tube to Heathrow Airport before midnight, and it was already half past nine.
    I backed out of the stall, glanced at my pale bespectacled image in the filthy mirror over the sinks, wiped a smudge of blood off my chin and pushed back a sweaty lick of hair that had fallen into my lace.
What am I forgetting?
I wondered.
How have I left my stamp on this scene, my signature on Sam’s poor outraged body?
I could think of nothing.
    Something was seeping into one of my socks, oozing warmly between my toes. I glanced down at my feet and swore. A small lake of blood was already spreading out from the stall, shiny as black lacquer in the dismal light. The bottoms of my shoes were foul with it. I’d tracked his blood all over the floor, and the prison knew my shoe size. But I couldn’t risk taking the time to wipe up the footprints.
    The sink farthest from the door already sagged loose from the wall, probably as a result of men leaning against it with their flies unzipped I threw all my weight onto it, sat on its edge and bounced up and down, felt it loosen further, then give. The metal shrieked as it ripped away from its moorings. The ancient plumbing gave a great rattling groan. The sink toppled to the floor and broke in half. The orphaned pipe began to spew water in great whirling arcs.
    Within seconds the floor was covered with a thin film of dirty pink-tinged water, which I trod in to clean my soles. I had a last look at Sam, offered him a silent apology for not being able to linger, for leaving him alone here.
Your life collided with mine,
I explained,
and you simply failed to survive the wreckage.
    Then I hurried up the cement stairs and left that dreary place forever. Suddenly I was a great one for leaving dreary places, it seemed.
    I only hoped I would find somewhere I wanted to stay.
    Â·Â Â Â·Â Â Â·
    At Painswick there had been (and likely still was) a petty thief and occasional rapist called Mason. I met him on Christmas Day, one of the few times I was allowed out of my cell to visit the television lounge. One of the holiday programmes announced a string quartet playing a piece by Mozart. Before anyone could change the channel, Mason hurled himself in front of the telly and turned the sound as far up as it would go.
    He was an unimpressive, weaselly little fellow, and a great grunting murderous yob soon tossed him aside and switched over to repeats of rugby playoffs. Mason spent the rest of the day in my corner, explaining to me the kinship he felt with Mozart. He’d seen the film
Amadeus
seven times. He considered himself a blazing talent unrecognized in youth, left to rot on the vine.
    â€œWhat kept you from fame and fortune, then?” I asked him once.
    His answer astounded me. “My mum ’n’ dad wouldn’t let me have piano lessons.”
    So it was with murderers, I often thought. There were would-bes and would-nevers, and those who killed accidentally or