Allan Kuper and Allan Kuper and Allan Kuper. They had split so many times, along so many subconscious faults; such simple differences as good and bad were absorbed and discarded long ago. Each gained something and lost something in the dividing, but the hunger remained. Always the hunger, Allan Kuper lusting after Allan Kuper, heart calling out to heart, flesh to flesh.

The poet Allan Kuper was full of laudanum when they came for him. The opium dulled the wanting, but not the need; his teeth were sharp as starlight. They came for him, three Allans together, and pulled him down. He sank his teeth in one’s throat, drove his favorite knife deep in another’s thigh, but the third—the subtle Allan Kuper—was behind him.

His poems settled down around them, white paper on three bodies. Allan Kuper bent to gorge.