Seeking new victims, he instead meets Jay Byrne (based on Jeffrey Dahmer), a wealthy recluse who is also a serial killer, as well as a cannibal.

Increasingly embittered by his illness, Lucas vents his frustration through his alternate persona "Lush Rimbaud", host of a pirate radio program (in a pirate station with the callsign "WHIV") where Lucas rails at society's denial of gay men and the AIDS epidemic (coincidentally, the callsign would be used in real life for a licensed station in New Orleans that chose the call letters specifically to remove stigma about HIV/AIDS but with no other relation to Brite's novel[2]).

After partially consuming Jay in a final act of love, Andrew leaves New Orleans to continue his murderous career, while Lucas, returning home, vows to spend his remaining time writing a novel to try to make sense of what he has witnessed.

In 1991, Brite signed a contract to write three novels for Delacorte Books, the first two being Lost Souls and Drawing Blood, with Exquisite Corpse set to be the third.

In early 1995, Brite turned in the finished manuscript of Exquisite Corpse and was informed that Delacorte would be unable to publish the novel due to its violent content.