This chapter explores the transition of the abject as a literary device from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” to its adaptations in two Southeast Asian countries, specifically Phạm Cao Củng’s “The Fingerprints on the Ceiling” and Ramjitti’s “The Murderer of Bangkhunphrom.” It employs Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to emphasize how abjection is used to construct the marginalized identities of perpetrators and victims. It argues that in Poe’s work, the abject represents patriarchal gender anxieties and imperial racial tensions. This theme is reiterated in the two short stories from Siam and Annam, where abjection is used as a tool to exclude disadvantaged groups who do not serve the discourses of internalized colonialism and official nationalism. Ultimately, the chapter contends that abjection in these stories not only otherizes non-conformists from the Symbolic order, but also creates hypocritical paradoxes, or identity dilemmas, wherein the Annamese and Siamese aristocracy and intellectuals outwardly reject abject materials while being unconsciously attracted to them in various ways.