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

worries. T.V. was going to pull one of two things out of his pocket: Tran’s stash of acid or the letters. The letters would be infinitely worse.
    TV’s hand emerged clutching a sheaf of half-crumpled paper, a few ripped-open envelopes.
    Tran felt his stomach trying to cave in. All at once the acid and ecstasy he’d taken came rushing back tenfold. He did not even feel angry about the invasion of his privacy: there would be no point to such anger. His father wouldn’t understand it. He owned the house; therefore all its rooms and all its contents were his to peruse as he saw fit. Tran thought he might vomit as T.V. glanced at the first sheet of paper and began to read.
    â€œI want you underneath me
right now,
dear boy, my heart, my intestinal maze. I want to slide two fingers into the crook of your arm, there where the skin is as smooth as the crushed-velvet head of your cock. I have a fresh needle just for you, just for the arterial hard-on that throbs there. I slide stainless steel into your flesh, and the bead of blood that wells when I take the needle out is as tender as your …”
    T.V. stopped reading. Tran knew the next three words, could even visualize them scrawled in psychotic purple on the sheet of notebook paper his father held crumpled in his hand. They were “sugar candy asshole.”
    Tran attempted a smile. It came out nearly stillborn, a sickly mewling thing. “Yeah, um, Luke has quite a crazy style. He wants to be the next William S. Burroughs. He … uh … sends me all his fiction.”
    â€œVinh, please don’t insult me.” His father was speaking Vietnamese, which was a bad sign at such a time: it signified a complexity or depth of emotion he did not trust himself to express in English. The tonal qualities of the language alone comprised thousands of nuances and shadings. “This is not fiction. These are letters written to you about things you’ve done. Are these things the truth?”
    Not
Are these things true?
but
Are these things THE TRUTH ?,
the one truth, as if there might be no other.
    Tran shrugged. His father’s gaze drove through him like long nails. “Yeah, at one time or another I did all that stuff. It wasn’t like I injected drugs every day or anything.”
    â€œWho is this man? This Luke?”
    â€œHe’s a writer. Seriously, Dad. He’s had four books published and he’s a brilliant writer. But he’s …”
Sick, vicious, as crazy with pain as a run-over dying dog
. “Kind of unstable. I quit seeing him months ago.”
    â€œHe lives in New Orleans?” There was no return address on the letters—Luke was no fool—but all the envelopes bore local postmarks.
    â€œNot anymore,” Tran lied. Well, it could be true. He didn’t know if Luke was still terrorizing the airwaves, hadn’t tried to tune in the show in months. Only shreds and tag ends of gossip told him that Luke was even still alive.
    The best defense was a good offense. “Look, Dad, I don’t know what you want from me. You came in my room, you went through my stuff—you must not have trusted me in the first place. Are you really surprised?”
    â€œNo, Vinh … no.” His father stood before him with bowed shoulders. He couldn’t recall ever having seen his father’s shoulders bowed before. T.V.’s usual posture was straight, almost stiff. But not now. “I wish I could be surprised, but I’m not. That is precisely why I looked. And I’m sorry.”
    â€œSorry for what?” Tran heard his voice crack, cursed it. But he sensed that the end of the talk was drawing near, and he knew nothing good could lie at the end of this talk.
    â€œFor my own part in this. Your mother and I must have done something terribly wrong. And what if the twins turn out like you?” A new shadow crossed his father’s face, a depth of darkness previously unplumbed. “You