The Creation of Frankie Carrozza

Bright Young Things

Frankie's arms lay limp over either side of the old clawfoot tub like canoe oars. A cigarette dangled from one hand, causing for grey streamers of smoke to dance up until they threaded through the steam of the hot water and became indistinguishable. He gazed upon the decorative plaster ceiling moldings, lost to a trance. He wasn't pondering anything particularly philosophical or profound as his smoking would usually suggest, due to having a penchant for mulling musings and puffing cigarettes. He believed he had seen film footage or too many pieces of art in which the subject standing for it was captured during reflection with a cigarette, cigar, or pipe in hand, and he'd noted the expressions etched upon their faces.
A clump of ash snowed onto the red carpet embroidered with gold scrollwork. A fireplace sat directly to the left of him, choked with coal; he was awaiting the tongue of fire due to punch through like the last survivor of a horrific ordeal. The room was much larger compared to his last one, and he shared it with no other, which he deeply enjoyed; however, the stigma of owning it had put considerable distance between him and the other boys along the corridor due to his being appointed his father's old lair before he even became a senior or prefect—whom it had been reserved for. Oh, the silly power of a name spoken often and a shiny coin.
There were two areas to it. The section he currently occupied was an open-planned stretch of a living area with a short set of mahogany steps leading up to a smaller segment, where his bed and bedroom door was situated. Just over the ornate banister of the stairwell onto the platform, he could see his remarkable treasure trove stacked on shelves on top of a chest that were stuck into the gap between the railing and the bed squished against the wall. The top shelf of the cabinet containing all of his pilfered pirate's hoard that was slowly beginning to grow was dedicated to his favourite items: snow globes gathered from all the corners of the world and all sorts of walks of life, acting as doorways to his memories. The second ledge comprised of metal soldiers, collectible miniature motorbikes that had belonged to his uncles and father, and a portmanteau and jewellery boxes with a few trinkets poking out. There were miscellaneous items that many would deem strange to hoard in his emporium; which included, but was not limited to: ornamental daggers, letter openers, the stuffed owl and kestrel, the netted bags of marbles and conkers, ceramic owls, glass butterflies, a Viking helmet, a faulty musket, jam jars filled with candles, decanters, old wines, tools, and a little birdcage. These were the sort of items that people keep cherished in their hearts due to their being sentimental portals to younger days, and if they ever wished for another to see them, they became tattoos—or so Frankie believed. Frankie had always dreamed of rousing to find a shrine that honoured the notion that he had ventured out to collect little pieces of the world to then bring them back and stack them like books on a shelf, giving memories a form for means of revisitation if he could not seep them into his skin. Aside from the scarf that had belonged to Martin Healy, the third shelf was empty but for one other item: a little origami dragon that Drew Hogarth had folded as a trophy that Carrozza had collected from him.
Each of them were items he treasured for various reasons, and it irked him that he could not use his entire body as a canvas so as to tattoo them all over it to join the two he had already imprinted upon himself—a black lion's paw printed over his heart that Trevor had branded him with once he'd procured a tattoo kit from only God knows where, and the word saoirse, which meant "freedom" in Gaelic, which Cahir Quinn had etched onto him after they spent a morning surfing in Barleycove, County Cork, the summer past.
The bedroom door burst open and Frankie flinched, rising up out of the bath. He settled back down into it again once he spotted Hamilton thundering down the steps with his face buried in a book, looking quite disdainful.
'And just where have you been all day?' Trevor demanded, not bothering to look up from his reading. 'I have been wandering about this room and these old halls awaiting your return like a ghostly dowager or a bored spinster aunt. Settling well into your new digs, I see.'
'At lessons; which is precisely where you ought to have been.' Frankie reclined his head back against the cast-iron rim lined with porcelain to stare at the ceiling again, blowing a puff of smoke up towards the roof to create the mushroom cloud of a nuclear blast.
'Why should I attend a place such as that whilst the merits I require for the life I shall no doubt live can be self-taught all the more satisfactorily had I the time to spare?' Trevor responded, flicking the page of the book distastefully before tutting his disgust. He was wearing ashen-coloured breeches, Frankie observed, turning his head against the edge of the tub again, and a scarlet tunic that flowed down to his thighs like a pint of blood thrown over him. He'd taken it with him after he'd finished with drama class in the Farrer Theatre, of course. Hamilton truly enjoyed nothing more than to dress for the part as the mastermind villain antagonising the world; which was precisely how he viewed himself in the mirror—a boy that believed himself to be a growing cancer upon the earth, like fungus or black moss.
He ripped a page out of the book and cast it away from himself like a used handkerchief.
'What are you reading so violently?' Frankie asked, drawing his attention back to the ceiling once more as he gently writhed his legs back around.
'I'm a quarter of the way through The Crimson Grin by Jensen Romarty. I hope he twists restless in his grave, the old crypt keeper. Are you aware that this has been considered as a classic? A classic? What an astounding joke. I've read strips of the funnies at the back of the newspapers more worthy of a title,' Hamilton seethed, taking two oddly placed steps into the middle of the room near the windows and pouring feverishly over the pages. 'It is a whodunnit that ought to be referred to as a whywriteit if you ask me.'
'I didn't,' Frankie murmured drowsily, closing his eyes and bearding his cheeks with suds.
'It is a classic only by right because it has cleverly disguised the author's sanctimonious, pretentious, and diluted grandeur behind flimsy jargon that carries on for hundreds and hundreds of pages, large enough for me to be more interested in killing someone with the book, rather than find out who killed whom in the book. This is the lexicon of most classical authors; many of whom tend to make symbolism and analogies out of a flower, which makes me want to spit and wee on the daises pushing up out of their graves.' He paused for a moment to light a cigarette, still mumbling incoherently, before he reconvened his stem-winder of a speech at full force. 'I've already deduced who the killer of the immensely wealthy mother is. She was a right piece of work, that character, but she snuffed it quite early in the book. She was the matriarch of a large and madly eccentric family that had been revealed to be indulging in sensationalised debauchery that fell just a little too flat for my liking. You see, the distressed and incestuous son keeps enquiring about why and how someone could kill his poor lover/mother instead of when, whilst simultaneously and subtly alluding towards an alleged murder weapon found stained with blood in the fireplace ... I state alleged murder weapon because he has coerced the detectives into treating it as an attempted murder and abduction, causing for them to assume the woman was knocked unconscious with the blunt object so that intruders could kidnap her to hustle ransom money from the family in exchange for her safe return. This is altogether a terribly incorrect approach. Her favourite brooch has been nicked. Kidnappers do not take possessions as trophies; killers, however, do.' Trevor ripped the second half of the book out and threw it across the room for it to land on the carpet like a broken bird. 'I cannot be bothered to continue on just to reach the oedipal conclusion and have my theories validated—from their blatant mother-and-son love affair being exposed to her corpse being discovered buried alive underneath the new lavender bush. All because the son wanted to claim his inheritance early so he could run off to Sri Lanka away from her overbearing presence with the stableboy who'd bedded them all.'
'That was my book.' Frankie groaned.
Trevor glanced up at him as he dropped the first half of it at his feet, rubbing his hands together as though to cleanse them of the filth they had just held. 'Then you're welcome, you filthy prune. It was complete and utter odious drivel.'
Trevor strode back up the stairs towards the bookcase opposite the bed and returned to sit beside the tub, crossing his legs on a chair facing Frankie and opening another volume to read as the other boy soaked himself. 'I left an excellent book on your pillow to replace it, which you will simply devour. It's called Interview with the Vampire by a wonderful writer known as Anne Rice. Such a delightful read. It felt as though as I was reading a history textbook about one of the many past lives walked by our ancient souls. You will enjoy it tremendously.'
Prodded to freedom by a poker, they listened to the fire roar an angry song as it survived its suffocation and the leathery sounds of Hamilton turning pages as the time passed. When the afternoon light began to darken considerably, Trevor, puffing excessively on another thin black cigar, emitted another dissatisfied groan. 'This Gatsby fellow is an obsessive simpleton seeking the dullest of treasures, and this Daisy Buchanan girl is as shallow as a sink, as vapid as a used condom, and I've seen more spine in a coat hanger. I'd like to say that she reminds me of our Seraphina Rose, but I cannot, as I have never been a merchant of dishonesty. At least our Rose in the garden has a zoo full of gumption in her boots and carries her own umbrella, no matter how naturally vexing she is. Are you aware that she had a pivotal role to play in the Brixton riot back in April?'
'I quite like Gatsby—something childish in his nature. And you've only just voiced what Fitzgerald intended to convey. Now, are you just going to denounce every piece of literature, great or wilted, that is presented to your eyes,' Frankie muttered as he twiddled his toes against the curve of the bath on the other side, 'or is it that you just enjoy hearing your voice so much?'
'Give me the macabre. Give me the gothic. Give me the immoral. Give me the morbid. Give me such twisted horror that I begin to cringe and writhe. The thriving of the cruel and the vile, and the death of the mundane and the virtuous. Shock me with things that most writers are too cowardly to portray—be it seedy or improper. I have no need for the glitz and the glamour of stories retold over and over again, and hidden behind the code and conduct of beauty. Perhaps ... just perhaps we don't rub the dust and soot off of the utmost decadent characters as the story progresses to have a diamond shard shine through underneath. Give me Poe, give me Lovecraft, give me Shelley, give me Stoker, give me King, give me Matheson! Now, those men and women have and had a spoiled set of steel gonads. Tell me stories left untold about the corrupted origins of a villain's rise, documenting his legacy to his undefeated end. Whisper to me dark and grim fairy tales unexplored after bedtime, where happily ever after is but a dream within a fantasy. Let me come along into a tale about the darker passions and most sordid endeavours for dissipation. Twist my guts until I'm at unease, wherever that immeasurable limit may be,' Trevor announced darkly and fervently. He lowered his hand like wings balancing on a dying wind before he pitched the book away from him so that it slid under a dresser. 'Though, perhaps there is a chance that I do enjoy the sound of my own voice from time to time, too.'
'Brilliant,' Frankie murmured. 'An orator who has found the ideal audience in himself.'
Feeling playful, Trevor bent down and dipped his fingers into the hot water of the tub and gave it an inspiring twirl much like how one would tickle the peachy flesh of a bared lover with roving hands. 'You enjoy acting as an audience member for my speeches when they take ahold of me and come clambering up my throat to create tremors. You relish in the image of rising up to achieve the greatness and the grandeur that I inspire in you; therefore, we both play as ideal audience members to a rather brilliant orator,' Trevor uttered quietly, his dangerous tone, uncrossing his legs to then cross them again in the opposite direction.
'I don't have a choice when it comes to situations like these,' Frankie replied after he sunk beneath the water and emerged moments later. 'When I am compromised.'
'Let us refrain from discussing how sensational I am in much and more and leave it for another night when we have red wine at hand. Instead, as tedious as it is, we shall converse about your moderate accomplishments or potential thereof for now. How did the mission go with our dear little record keeper?'
'That prudish bookworm,' Frankie moaned, reflecting on the objective executed the day previous. 'Unfortunately, I am not to be the flavour desired by his pernickety taste buds.'
'Oh.' Hamilton's eyes widened somewhat with surprise. 'I was so certain you would be. I hadn't even bothered to carry out that extensive an investigation or set any further surveillance on him to uncover a third angle to come at him from. I considered him to be an easy target due to my understanding that the last extraordinary night he'd been shown previous to this last fortnight, and long before he begun scheduling marital missionary, was leaving his mother's cervix. Oh well, Carrozza, you can't be everyone's cup of tea.'
With his hands clutching the rim of the bath, he hoisted himself forward with a cigarette held tight between pursed lips for Hamilton to light it with his own, and then as he reclined back, Carrozza begun to recapitulate the entire ordeal.
Frankie had entered the dusty and musty back office, a room hidden at the back of Eton and used to store the school documents, late in the afternoon the day before. He'd been sent on a mission: to execute the eradication of his personal records so that once the slate was wiped clean, they could build a new structure on the demolition site to carve a more suitable image of him from scratch. However, the office was guarded by a young bookish man, who might just have been comely enough after a pint or two of stout.
Feigning an excuse about waiting for a lift, Frankie had sat on the edge of his desk and discussed the latest cricket game with him, all the while slowly sliding closer to his target decked in a sweater vest. When the opportunity arose, with the man rolling his creaky chair forward, Frankie offered himself up on a plate by subtly widening his knees to form a chalice, bored enough that day to be willing to participate, as he stretched this arms far enough to bare the band of his underwear. However, when he put his foot up on the chair between the man's legs, his eyebrow had rocketed upwards quizzically, and he begun to question the true intentions behind his appearance.
Taken aback and quickly understanding that his proposition made to attempt to swindle the man was foiled, no longer able to attach a string to the puppet through gratification, Frankie implemented the backup plan. From the back of his trousers, he produced a brown envelope and dropped it onto the desk. Suspicious, the man ripped it open to find it filled with snapshots documenting the scandalous activity that he had been engaged in with the school matron on the very desk Carrozza was perched upon. As Frankie lit a cigarette beside him, the man bent forward over the scattered display, his face blanching from shame and horror as he rubbed his forehead with a hand weighing down heavily from the gold band wrapped around his finger.
'Status update of my records: a clump of ash on a desk, like the remnants leftover from a phoenix birthed anew,' Frankie declared victoriously. 'Mind you, you have to pity poor Gavin Renford, with his thick black glasses and his ghastly oversized cardigan hanging over the rickety chair like a streak of sick, he couldn't quite remember his words when we burnt them together with the polaroids, and he probably still can't at this hour of the following day.'
'Very good.' Hamilton smiled, yet it always looked like a sneer. 'I'm very impressed. You ought to be rewarded.'
'I still don't understand why you didn't want me to burn your records folder along with them. The chance had presented itself,' Frankie continued, disregarding his quip about a guerdon as though he hadn't heard it. 'Alas, I am absolutely certain it was stuffed with enough paper to make the Forest of Dean shiver with apprehension from fearing what mischief you might brew over what remains of the year.'
'I enjoy the sloppy black stains and sticky ink inside my hefty and misshapen folder. And between you and I, Carrozza, I'm striving for my very own cabinet,' Trevor murmured as his hand roamed the water. 'We need only yours to be compiled into the most compelling read. Considering the rudiments, with its structure carefully built on a well-thought-out frame, it will become the grandest and most ambitious piece of architectural work for miles around. I intend to make it the most lavish masterpiece worth being strung up upon the walls of this museum. Now, when are you getting out of the tub? I feel like dear Florence Nightingale attending to you at your bedside. Furthermore, I'm becoming dreadfully bored of your willy looking back out at me like a coral-reef sea cucumber poking between the plants. Get out and we'll take LSD whilst watching David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth.'
'I'm undecided. I'm neglecting to make that commitment as it means I will have to drag the tub back to where I stole it from. Soon, I'd imagine, as my fingertips are truly beginning to resemble raisins.'
'I could join you.' Trevor grinned and put his cigarette out in the water, much to Frankie's distaste. 'Care for a celebratory fumble?'
Frankie pushed the meandering hand away from his thigh and stood up. 'Bring me that towel.'|
Trevor stepped around to the fireguard and lifted up the towel to carry it back to the other side of the tub, proceeding to walk into the middle of the floor. 'Come here and step into it.'
'I honestly loathe you at times, you don't know the half of it,' Frankie muttered bitterly. 'I genuinely wonder why I have remained your friend for all of these harrowing years sometimes. Curse you, Hamilton, for being my curse!'
'The human soul loves to hate. It feeds off of it like a parasite. It is the preferable beverage to the consumption of love it ingests from another source. Now, come to me,' Trevor replied silkily, spreading the towel out like a matador.
Stark with confidence, Frankie stepped out of the bath and marched towards Trevor with a ferocious frown budging out a stern brow, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind and sodding the carpet. When he neared him, Trevor sprung back as Frankie snatched out for him. His grin arrived black-hearted as he hopped out of reach around the room like a vindictive imp from a folk tale.
'Are you sure you want to challenge me, boy?' Trevor jeered, sniggering before he jumped off the armchair to dodge Carrozza's lunge. 'The secrets I know about you that no other knows could leave you in ruins if I was to repeat them. You're a far cry from the young boy I remember wearing baby blue pyjamas covered in winsome yellow rubber ducklings to bed.'
'It's unsettling to think how even then,' Frankie retorted breathlessly, 'yours were matching black-and-purple ones dotted with skulls and bottles filled with lime green poison.'
As the harum-scarum game ensued, with Hamilton springing through the air each time Frankie plunged his hand through it, mischief gave way to malice once Frankie lost interest in the towel. Fraught with frustration after slipping on a pair of shoes and underpants, when he had caught Trevor at last, he shoved him into a cabinet. Hamilton only unleashed a cruel cackle to the roof before bouncing off like a leprechaun skedaddling away with his pot of gold, which angered him all the more. Fury swelled inside him, hot like dragon fire confined behind his ribcage, and before he could prevent himself, his palm shot out and formed into a fist midway to punch Trevor, causing him to stumble to the floor onto his hands and knees.
As Hamilton rubbed the trickle of blood from his nose on the backs of his fingers, he only laughed manically again. The towel was thrown aside, forgotten, as he leapt at Frankie and the boys tumbled across the carpet like tumbleweed pushed with a gust. Fists pounded into each other's bodies like meat tenderisers, conjuring aggressive grunts and groans from one another as globes and drawers were shattered apart once dragged into the fray.
They rolled each other onto their backs, slamming one another into the hardwood as they contested for the upper hand. Breathless, Carrozza straddled Hamilton and pinned him to the floor with his knees. His fist pumped like a piston as he hit him with a light jab on the jaw before he was bucked off and pressed against the cool wood. Trevor panted on top of him as Frankie dropped his head backwards to glance out the large windows overlooking the garth behind him, wary that anyone in the right position could glance across the corridor opposite to see the half-naked wrestling match. He redirected his gaze to Trevor, who was bearing down on top of him with his skeletal hands clenched tight around his forearms to restrain him, their lungs inflating and deflating against one another as they craved for oxygen.
'Here we are then, demon,' Frankie panted, feeling a trickle of blood vein down his smeared mouth. 'Alas, a pair of connivers held up in our lair alone with nought but our sins for company. What of us then when our plan is through?'
'Indeed, my wretched angel.' Trevor groaned, his eyes alight with fire as his hips slowly gyrated against him. 'Alas, we four shall remain such Bright Young Things, Francesco Carrozza; and these violent things have violent means for tragic ends.'
'Nobody calls me that anymore,' Frankie responded austerely.
As he lowered himself down, Hamilton replied, 'Am I nobody to you?'
The metallic taste of blood bloomed in the kiss, jagging their mouths like thorny roses.