The Taming of Frankie Carrozza

Heaven's Saving Grace

'Tonight we attend the funeral for all of our older selves as we make our way spiritedly towards Heaven,' Imogen Rose exclaimed as she popped the cork off the top of the champagne with deviant and carnal success as it foamed and overflowed. 'Here lies the dearly departed, forgotten in our wake.'
'Here, here! Chin-chin!' Izzy cheered. 'To rise from our ashes, very much like phoenixes reborn. One must hold preciously to the belief that every single night has its own playlist and the world has always belonged to the young.'
'And I hope, I pray, with all our old corpses, that Charlie, that you lovingly leave behind Frankie Carrozza, too, to be buried with them six feet deep.' Imogen continued as she filled their wobbling glasses.
The limousine fled through the night, gobbling up the road of the countryside as darkness hurried by, pressing in loyally alongside. They were heading towards a nightclub in London for the night, located underneath Charing Cross railway station in Central London, just by Trafalgar Square, where the coven of all those that humanity forgot and condemned as wicked gathered. It was an underground establishment called Heaven, an afterlife on Earth where they'd previously promised to stay for only a spell, to join those who'd come to see the dawn rise before they were banished from the clouds of the sanctuary.
'May Frankie Carrozza rest in peace,' Charlie chimed as he clinked his glass to theirs in the toast, meaning it kindly and wholeheartedly. Buried with the boy lamented beneath the snow.
'Marvellous, my darling, for all of that wallowing was ever so unbecoming.' Imogen grinned as she nipped at her leather leggings, so tight to her skin that they may accidentally flay her in their removal later that night, or she may only need to rub them out with an eraser to take them off. She was all gold chains, smoke from lipstick-stained cigarettes, champagne and a bright white fur coat that blanketed the long stretched backseat like a field of snow draped over a black corselette. 'You had to come back down from your high. You had to come back down one day, for if you were to head out any further, you might have just rightly forgotten how to ever return, and you, my dear, have been away for far too long. You may lose your head, but never your heart; one or the other, but never at the same time.'
The driver, Tony, had been blasting Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper from the radio into the backseat at Imogen's request, over and over; it was her current frivolously fancied favourite. This had been the fifth time it played, but no other sound would have embellished or embodied the night so perfectly.
Imogen lurched herself forward up the long stretch of the vehicle again, near knocking the drink out of Charlie's hand, as she ventured up to converse with the chauffeur over the partition, to share a cigarette with him and to once again remind Tony that the song must be repeated until they reached their destination.
'As you command, princess,' Tony said, gently knuckling her chin fondly.
I am here, Charlie thought wistfully and happily, drunkenly content as he sunk a gulp from a garish green bottle that held silvery liquid that should have tasted of stardust rather than sawdust. He lit a cigarette and let the smoke stream out the windows with the surf of dust beneath the wheels, trailing its embers to spray like fireworks into the dark oblivion falling behind and the breeze that thrashed like the seas as they blew on in a blaze of glory. And as I look to her, she whose mother told her to always be bold, boyish and girlish, and she who always championed for me, she is so stunning, for she, too, was a vision and a visionary.
I can see it. This is it: the one moment when you understand you're no longer—or, rather, not only—just a sorrow's story. Right now, this moment isn't yet a tale; I am alive and making memories. If I was to stand up, I'd see the silhouettes of the trees and the countryside fields we roamed as children in our youth, lilac in the moonlight. I can look to the verge of the dazzling city lights on the buildings winking from yonder, cutting monolithic shapes ahead and twinkling amber to invite us to pander to our sins and pay for glory with our innocence in the place we are all due to rove once older. And who are we to deny our matriculation to it, from the beige heaths to the inky cobbles, when we see it all—everything that makes us curious to wander and wonder. For now, we are only premature visitors, due soon to enter, due soon to leave behind. However, for now, I'll remember this; I'll remember the memory of listening to this song on this drive with the people I love most in this rambunctious world; for right now, in this very moment, like all the souls, we three are the cosmic storytellers of the stars and this is a tale certainly worthy of being told.
'We're heading onwards towards the clouds of Heaven, Imogen, to die and to live and to be reborn, as you say,' Charlie called as she came hobbling back down towards them. 'Do you have any last words to make peace with your God before you greet your fate?'
Imogen paused for a moment, halfway down towards them, and considered this for a moment. She shot up and out of the sunroof to embrace the night with her arms. They heard her screech her eulogy into the starry void of it: 'COCO CHANEL, MY LIEGE, I FOLLOW YOU INTO BATTLE! AND WHEN YOUR CROWN TUMBLES, HUNDREDS OF GIRLS SHALL ANSWER THE CALL AND CLAIM IT USING HEELS FOR SWORDS.'
They joined her up there, the three of them dangling between the road and the universe as the wind billowed around them, and they roared and laughed into the violet darkness, until the stars leaned down bright and intrigued to play witness. The country opened before them: little towns sprawled in the distance like splashes of a concrete infection, obscured blocky, shadowy and snug shapes and molten rivers of bright little streetlights like flecks of orange embers and ash from cigarettes.
Imogen smothered their shoulders with her creamy, snowy fur coat as they courageously hurled fearless laughter into the wind rushing against them.
'I want to dance by the Gulf of Mexico beneath the Mexican sky, drink some margaritas by a string of blue and yellow lights and listen to the mariachi bands play come midnight. Are you with me, my boys? Will you come with me?' Imogen implored. The promise was sworn to do so and bound in a vow by the three sharing mouthfuls from the bottle in a bloody pact that tasted of lipstick, critic perfume and bittersweet fairy dust, gold dust and stardust; a foam of galaxies in their mouths and veins and beyond the night sky above.
Leaving the wilderness of the road behind, a muddy, wild and unruly undergrowth of a birth canal, London opened up like a metallic, concrete and smoky womb. Lights blossomed around them, blooming like a nightly spring, stars stollen and installed to outline the shadowy city in bright clusters that filled their eyes and hearts. Vibrant double-decker buses triumphantly tooted and commanded the reins of the road like the brutish sovereign swans of the river.
One could easy envisage the modern princes and princesses of the land floundering about them on the smoggy cobbled lanes, lounging in town cars, behind the shades of limousines or stomping about in Joseph Cheaney & Sons leather shoes and Donegal tweed; crowns, horse-drawn carriages and sceptres cast aside to be replaced by boater and panama hats, cigars, booze, Cadillac limos and public debauchery.
They gobbled it up with their eyes, as rich to their palates as any champagne they'd ever sipped upon greedily. They watched it all, swallowing glittery mouthfuls that tasted of silver and gold as they gazed out upon drunkards stumbling from Irish bars belting rebel songs that Cahir Quinn had them learn by heart, sitting by curbs drinking from brown bottles wrapped in brown paper bags and blue plastic bags and smoking cigarette stubs as they shared their own personal wartime stories. They were dregs, used up and coughed out of taverns, feeling their mortality, offering the memories of their glory days as a sacrifice into the river of humanity flowing evermore. Slowly killing themselves to make art out of life, they were beautiful, dirty, crooked, bent, broken, sentimental and enough to break your sorry heart, and nothing more than the glow of cigarette ends in the night.
'Is that what we become, come the night's end?' Izzy smiled wanly as he looked to the gritty girls in short skirts, ripped, ragged and tatterdemalion tights and outworn leather jackets with cigarettes in hand, stained crimson from mouths smeared heavily with lipstick, the colour of the blood flowing throughout their vampiric hearts. Bold boys stood at street corners, sucking on thin black cigars clenched in scarred, tough and jutting mouths, wearing aviator jackets, white tees, mean scowls, and short denim jackets dashed with coke, grime and bruises; each with a dark Dracula or a darker Devil deep in their minds; each of them looking for another drink, another sniff, another bob or another john to bob their mouths on to score all three. 'The weary brave, who jubilantly wander the evenings of this concrete jungle that is left to them, the Nightly Circus, this pandering royal ballroom, where the princes and princesses, kings and queens, knights and jesters, hustlers and harlots of merrymaking writher and conquer with the last of the glory in their hearts until the new royals arrive to commit regicide and claim their heads, crowns and thrones.'
'Anything could happen,' Imogen muttered wistfully, sparkling with excitement as she gazed out upon the city villainously from behind a pair of large dark sunglasses that reflected Trafalgar Square in the lenses, bunched equally with pigeons and tourists and splashes of flickering florescent colours from screening advertisements. 'Trust me, anything happens quite often.'
'But unlike these sediments, we shall reign forever,' Izzy whispered ever so quietly, so that almost only he could hear the exclamation.
'But just like these boys and girls commandeering in the cobbles, we all think forever truly lasts forever,' Charlie murmured quietly, resting his head on his folded arms as he gazed out at the boys and girls, who were searching for something beyond the nights and the lights, something peculiar and strange, uncertain if they were to survive it. 'Until it doesn't.'
'Careful now, darling. You're beginning to sound an awful lot like someone we mustn't mention too frequently.' Imogen giggled, teasing him with her tongue between her teeth.
Charlie cocked his eyebrows towards her. 'As are you, betraying the family resemblance.'
The entrance to Heaven was almost secretive; secluded and hidden in an underground tunnel in the vaulted cellars of Charing Cross. They didn't have to join the fenced queue; once they'd arrived, a bouncer beckoned to Imogen ecstatically to shepherd them in through the wide blue barn doors. As they swept past the crowd, receiving a few disdainful glares and disgruntled cries of protests that were silenced by the bouncer's harsh bark, Charlie spied the two boys just about to enter before them.
'I can't,' the boy in the starched shirt objected, though eager to spy the haven ahead. 'It's against my religion!'
'Well then, welcome to church,' his companion replied coyly, pulling him to his mouth and through the doors.
Charlie entered the doorway into the dimly lit corridors, all shadows for sins to hide, as the disco music pumped and throbbed through the walls like vessels in the veins from the bowels of the club, beyond and below.
'Let us pass through the pearly wooden gates and enter Heaven, my boys, where I may live dreamily, where I may be permitted for my sins, as only a Heaven on Earth will allow it, and what else does Earth have to offer us that we haven't already taken? Here is where we'll rest peacefully: Heaven on Earth. Here, where our sins are not heavy weights collected and tied around your ankles to sink you to condemnation, but badges of honour rewarded,' Imogen sung as she threw her fur coat at the woman stationed in the cloakroom so zealously that it nearly toppled her and she marched onwards along the carpet to thrust open the gates to the underbelly of the city. 'Where I may be reckless without wear and without ever needing to think that I simply must live unapologetically and just simply have to carelessly live; this is a place where a girl may proudly be the Madonna and the whore; and I would much rather be a whore than a bore. Where woman is man in more ways than two extra letters. So you know, as they say, heels were only invented for the single reason being that woman would be unable to outrun in strides and outmatch the male—or, rather, at the very least, keep up. Mind you, we overcame and accomplished this hinderance of performing in heels; after all, Ginger Rodgers did everything Fred Astaire did ... except backwards and in high heels. We women can do twice the work a man does but only get half of the credit; and that's only women, imagine how it must be for a group that is even more so a minority. But enough of that dreary discussion for now,' Imogen purred as she flung herself out onto the railing and overlooked the dance floor bearing the face of a conquerer. 'Welcome to the afterlife, to Heaven and to the Underworld, where beyond Judgement Day, you live free of judgement. Forgive me, Father, for I may just yet sin tonight.'
Charlie stepped out onto the balcony as the electronic music sung a gorgeous gospel and the bodies swarmed, writhed and danced to the beat below like a pit full of snakes answering to the charms of the pungi. This was the Nightly Circus; they had found it. This was the dark paradise. Here they had come to gather in a secret union beneath the urban streets of law and order that dispelled them to form a wild world of their own; one filled with utter freaks and the banished damned, an underworld of flightless angels, fallen demons, cherub saints and common sinners, all seeking grace and disgrace like a unibody at work. Here dwelled the worthy and the unworthy of so many: boys and girls, boyish girls and girlish boys, and gorgeous, alien, celestial and androgynous forms between and without that mustn't ever become wonted or they shall lose their stunning compulsion. One could free themselves into the utter wilds of the forests and fields, fall to capricious manners and dance, belt out incomprehensible songs and scream lungful passions into utter isolation for society did not dwell near to cause compliance; but here, in the belly of the world dwelling under another, a coven of creatures alike joined to give way to the complete and utter inner primal nature and desires, chorusing as one voice roaring for absolution. Here, wicked thoughts were just a lifestyle. Here, one wasn't damned amongst their own kind; not one man or woman or other nearby had the power of the Lord's word to preach. This was a delicious dark paradise. This is my church, in the gospel according to Heaven.
They swept along with the rivers of perfumed, pruned, primed, pierced, trimmed, tattooed, dyed and muscular conformations to spiral downwards towards the bars like a waterfall alongside the drag queens and the sailors, having just been drawn in from the sea and landed on the port. Only one instance briefly prevented them from attacking the bar, which was when Imogen was confronted by a crossdresser decked almost identical to her from toe to hair, although standing thick and tall like a puckered Amazonian and going by the name Lippy Luscious.
'A proponent of life imitating art,' Imogen called jokily to the gangly and pretty hulk, though had sworn promises to burn the blonde wig on their head before the morn to eradicate a doppelgänger in her midst. 'Although, be it shockingly or unsurprisingly, I am rather sexually intrigued. Bravo!'
With brightly coloured drinks in hand, like a molotov cocktail, the trio of them making up the bottle, petrol and cloth soaked in kerosene, they threw themselves amongst the throng of bodies and danced in the Dantean Sabbath amid a horde that trailed hands all over their bodies, seeking the thrill and contributing to the concoction of a fragrance made up of cologne, perfume, sweat, smoke and alcohol that stifled the hall. Thriving from the gregarious energy, it was then that it happened, an inexplicable enchantment had settled over Charlie. Compelled, as though by spell, he turned to follow his heart's desires and left his friends to maunder and dance with a gaggle of pretty boys in bouffant wigs, masquerade and animal masks, and a spectrum of coloured cigarettes dangling from their mouthes.
Charlie moved away, slithering amongst the crowd with wide, wondrous eyes, grazing his limbs against mottled bodies as he prowled through them like an astronaut seeking the stars. He lived and he died in the eyes of all those around him in each flash of the strobe lights that found him as bodies thumped, bumped, jumped, throbbed and threw themselves in a frenzy, clashing in a tizzy to the music as boys and girls drunk merriment from the mouths of everyone around him.
This was what he'd taken from Frankie: a newfound transmogrification in him to desire deliriously. A vampire lurked in him, one which fed off the bloodlust of carnal desire. All the times their bodies pressed bare against the other, a mutual transfusion had taken place.
Charlie could see it. He could envision the plump lips of the darkened and enlightened vampire sneaking out of the shadow, in through his window and over the sill; a creature from a grim fairytale that crept into his bed once fatefully invited. As they slid over his throat, the bottom lip tugged back against his clavicle. A warm, damp and sensual imprint from the mouth; heated, at first, and then the next press of lips cooled from exposure.
He could visualise the silvery gleam of his white teeth between a sly and excitable grin, the elongating of the eager and aroused fangs as they grazed the flesh until they had broken the skin and brought forth a whimper in the dark. The large hot hand of the beast had caressed across the soft tissue of the prey's back, ripples of skin bulged against fingers that clenched tight to keep the flesh in place throughout the ritual, with a violent hold to the body twisting in spasms and a dangerous thrust of the fangs.
The body of the boy bucked and writhed, the tongue touched the top of his salty lips and his flesh pressed tightly to the brawn of the other, hot all over, as his life poured out to feed his thirst and electrical currents surged throughout his veins. The ruby liquid of human life spilled over his elfin chest from the bite wound, a bead of it stained across the rosy nipple to slide down into his naval and thigh, warm like a bloody teardrop. The ravenous devour, the unquenchable thirst, more rapturous than any drop of influential substance or sordid act. The teeth sunk deeper into the crimson fount and a tearful and fearful moan of pain and pleasure followed; the living boy was lost to ecstasy as the blood was drank.
An absolution was found in the feeding, an understanding of pleasure, lust, love, life and death as the vampire slowly ceased just before the human's heartbeat began to sing a slow and morose funeral anthem, craters between each thump to warn of the impending arrival of true death and its deliverance.
A tender gesture of adoration was displayed as the bloody fingers of the damned creature swiped the sweaty fringe of his victim's hair across his forehead and out of his eyes, fingertips coated in red like the sticky juices on the hands of children plucking raspberries, nails glistening like gems and pearls. The cerulean eyes of the boy were delirious, weakened from the frenzy and blissfully lost to passionate exhalation from the drainage and simultaneous fulfilment.
The human could feel it all: the blood in the fountain of his entire body emptying into the mouth of the vampire, enfeebling his entire state until he could feel the incredible pleasure of it in his thighs and knees.
The creature's skin bore not the chill of death and the undead, but scorched as he touched, trailing a blaze as hellish as the fires that formed the fiend. His eyes glimmered in the dark like two garnet gemstones, the colours of rainforests in the night, approaching him and consuming all else in view so it felt he was running through a field towards a sumptuous forest. The irises told many a contradiction of dispositions: old, young, wise, innocent, kind and cruel.
The human, lingering upon the brink of oblivion, gasped aloud and yielded regret as the vampire withdrew his teeth like swords from sheaths. His creaseless skin was as smooth and white as marble, and his full beautiful mouth filled with blood-red liquid like spoonfuls of raspberry jam that soiled his cheeks. The mythical monster revealed its inability of total invincibility once it tore the skin of the marble wrist with a sharp bloody tooth and pressed it delicately to their human's lips so that he may drink from the chalice of flesh and everlasting life. The immortal held sturdily to the back of their mortal's head so that fingers threaded through dark hair, to let the demonic blood flow over the thirsty tongue of the boy that sought the tap greedily, licking the wound in a hysterical frenzy. With power filling his victim's limbs and leaving his own, the undead predator allowed the prey to hold the wrist to their mouth so that the rich blood poured past their hungry lips, using both hands with the strength still left in their might and the newfound brawn arriving to gorge on the only force in the magical fount that can sustain him now. The pleasure, the sheer absolute rapture of it all when siring a predator out of the human. With one last thump, the heart dies ... but the lover lives and resurrects as kin; the immortal eternizes the mortal with the nightly gift of forever; another predator searches for prey.
Charlie was quick to grasp the measure of his attraction, the wealth of his appearance. It wasn't extraordinary, worthy of art or profound; he'd once been compared to a faun cantering daintily in the mystical woodlands, which was neither flattering or disparaging. It was enough to provoke, enough to entice the desire for him in another when such allure was harnessed correctly like a weapon. And now, with his mind succumbing to his wicked gift, he was no longer the taught, but the teacher; he was no longer the prancing faun, but the prowling wolf transformed, howling wild beneath the moon. He was the wolf in faun's clothing, shredding the furs of the red panda between his teeth.
Dressed in tight black jeans and a loose-fitting cotton grey tee that was as soft as silk and bared the ivory skin over his fine clavicle bones, Charlie Chance meandered through the acolytes revelling around him. He craved a cruel boy, a boy who wore his cruelty on his sleeve.
A crooked angel stood by the bar; he picked him out of the crowd, fascinated by his long sleeveless tank top with the slogan and emblem of a local rock band, his even tighter black jeans and gleaming white shoes. He had wild, shaggy and dark black hair that swept up like a rugged Beatle member who had been shook violently. Tattoos scaled up his neck and arms and a black earring the shape and size of a button poked into his earlobe like a bullet hole.
Charlie bent himself across the bar over the space directly beside him and ordered a whiskey. It began as a dance of little movements and littler glances. When he felt the eyes of the boy, smothering his own form like a blanket, he finally spoke to him beneath the din, beginning first with touching the gothic crucifix on his neck and said he liked his tattoos.
His name was biblical: his name was Michael, like the archangel. According to the Book of Daniel, Michael was referred to as a great prince who stood up for the children of his people. In the Book of Revelation, he'd been the leader of God's army against the forces of evil, having defeated Lucifer in battle in the war between Heaven.
His dark attire was gritty and punk, like a groomed greaser or a bold Beatnik, but beneath his cruelty, there seemed to linger a beautifully childlike innocence to him that was untouchable, but by no means refraining, allowing one to picture him as a child. However, it was so deep—this perverse preciousness—that it did not hide his needful and downright wanton nature. An internal struggle between his Heaven and his Hell raged within; a demon and an angel locked inside, battling a divine and demonic war waged over the control of the body of the vessel.
'Do you believe in God?' Charlie asked him as he lit a cigarette. He studied Michael for a moment, believing him to have the will of the youths of his age: banished from God's garden and so expelling Him in return. 'Do you believe in angels and demons walking amongst us? That a human may have the potential to rise saintly, enlightened and exonerated of the soul's sins to reach divine exaltation? That as the world suffers, a saviour watches on untouched?'
Michael eyed him coyly, his stormy eyes glinting with humour as he rose to the challenge. He had the most beautiful mouth, Charlie observed. Each lip was equally full and thick from top to bottom, perhaps too large, and larger than the mouth of any girl he'd encountered. It had a conqueror unable to resist imagining taking him roguishly as a concubine, and the delicious and devilishly ungodly things they could do with them.
'Why not? Mightn't there be the Lord Almighty presiding over us from above?' he replied, scratching his nose by rubbing a finger underneath it like he was pretending it was a moustache. 'After all, we're all made too particular, too perfect and too imperfect with all of our peculiarities for there not to be—for us to exist by simple accident, that is. I believe we are all the angels and the demons; we're all ugly and beautiful and that is such a pretty and damning notion. Every atheist who ever addresses the principles of religion always challenge the idea that as the world moans and cries their sufferings through famine, genocides, diseases and war, time and time again, then why will God not step down from his ethereal kingdom and vanquish such distress if his hindrance is not his lack of existence. However, many citations of bibles, gospels and other books on Christianity—including other religions—preach that one of the most important things God apparently gave to humanity was free will. No child ever advances aspiringly without his or her volition, and no child's development is as thwarted as those denied his or her heuristic independence to go out into the world and equally achieve successes and mistakes.' Michael took a great puff of his cigarette and shot a smoky halo skywards towards the heavens. 'If you lived in a world filled with magic, would it still be called enchantments or would it just be redefined as science? I'd imagine a miracle would cease to be miraculous if they occurred every other day. Besides that, overpopulation would have pushed us into extinction a very long time ago if we didn't get slimmed down a bit by natural selection and natural disasters every once and awhile. It just seems that many think our creator is cruel because the world can be cruel, yet many very kind and goodnatured mothers and fathers can spawn what grows to become such sinister and loathsome monsters; Adolf Hitler was a scoundrel, but I'm sure his mum was a lovely woman. Less and less modern-day humans are submitted for canonisations, and I'd imagine many of us wouldn't qualify for an even holier ascension these days, but perhaps we have become unworthy of being saved.'
'You're generalising an entire population; the action of one out of ten cannot make us all undeserving of paradisiacal promises, surely.'
'The way I see it,' Michael said, as he pulled several objects on the countertop of the bar towards him—glasses, empty bottles and ashtrays—to begin to use for his demonstration, 'to simplify it, is that the world is split up into three types of people: those who'd use a Time Machine to go back and murder Hitler as a child, those who don't have the moxie to do so, and those who, quite frankly, would rather see out his reign. Victims are not at fault for being the effects or casualties of this—be it Aryan, darker, disabled or pious to a different religion—but man is to blame for discriminatory intentions. Personally, I wouldn't go back in time to purposely slap Hitler's mother as retribution for her son being a little shit; I'd burn down the art school years before it rejected him. And in saying that, who knows the limits of His power; we know him to be all-seeing, but not all-omnipotent.'
The angelic and demonic evangelist took another swig of his vodka and ice so that his lips glistened invitingly and his eyes brewed philosophy. 'Perhaps he does exist, perhaps he did, and perhaps he doesn't. But what would you say if I told you that God was truly dead?'
'I'd say, handsome devil, that's entirely alright with me.'
Charlie hooked his finger in through the loop of the boy's jeans and tugged him after him as he made for the stairs. His hand slid up to grasp the hand belonging to the willingly compliant and undoubtedly older boy behind him; though he hadn't earned too many years more than him, experience had wizened his irises. They journeyed through the jungle of beautiful boys on a glorious dance floor, all leather hips and sticky lips and hair shining wet with hair gel. When he whispered in his ear as they slipped between, Charlie could feel his short stubble prickle the soft skin of his jaw, and smell an intoxicating aroma of cologne, liquor and smoke.
He was a boy far down from Bedford, where he left to find his fix; Michael had a penchant for making vampires out of girls and boys who had eighteen years. He sang solo and played rhythm guitar for a band, the mascot of a bear glowing on his long scraggily tank top and their band name a quote derived from the works of Shakespeare that he couldn't quite recall. The rest of the members circulated the club around them.
It was up the stairs they went and out of view from prying eyes, the church in session behind and beneath them as they shared mouthfuls from a bottle of cheap rosé wine. Michael stumbled them both into a bathroom stall, where they stared at one another, full of charming grins and long thoughtful stares in close quarters.
'Do you want to go somewhere?' Michael asked, as he took another swig from the bottle and handed it to him.
'We are somewhere,' Charlie replied, bewildered.
Michael's hand slid into the small pocket of his tight jeans and pulled out a little bag of white dusty powder that looked like sugary snow. 'No, do you want to go somewhere beyond?'
'What is that?'
'Such innocence. It is the key, the key to the door we left closed behind, the only place where the magical imagination of childhood exists, and this our only means to ever truly return to wander that realm ... away from all the palaver and tohubohu,' Michael whispered.
Curious, Charlie watched him as he dealt out two lines of what might just be magical fairy dust on the sink from the misleading and inscrutable transparent bag. He was nervous, yet this was what he wanted: innocence lost. And so he bent over the sink and snorted the glistening powder into his veins, exploding through his face like volts of electrical currents. Charlie leant his head against the stall, taking another gulp of sour wine to wash back the bitter taste of chemicals gathered in the back of his throat, sniffing and rubbing his numbed nose.
'What do you want to do now?' Michael sniffed, rubbing a finger beneath his childlike nose like he was pointing towards his left.
Charlie's eyes burst open ecstatically in a stupor of intoxication and substance abuse. 'Hit me!'
'What?' Michael's face was comical, puzzled and sublime.
'Hit me!' Charlie cried again, more enthusiastically, electrified and excited. 'Go on, I dare you! Do it! Hit me! I want to feel something again.'
There was a moment of hesitation between the two, a panting breath, the desire to inflict between a pair who liked them crazy with raving instability. When the angelic demon might have just about hit him with his fist, instead, he struck him with a kiss. The very moment his lips filled Charlie's mouth, the drugs took effect as they slammed against the stall rowdily. The crystals gemmed through the labyrinth of his veins like blasts of lightning, leaving traces of a galaxy of stars in his bloodstream that shone out his eyes. He could feel his pupils dilating, two enormous black holes swelling as he blew onwards through interstellar like a cosmic comet. The sensational sensation of skin sensually touching skin was much too exhilarating; either not at all human and humane or more humane and human than ever experienced before—he was unsure which it was.
I have been posthumous much too long, and this is my shock from a lightning strike, bringing me back to life—living, elsewhere, and knowing that I can, Charlie thought as he felt the rough hair on the boy's jaw prickle pleasurably against the smooth palms of his hands until they tingled like he was clutching a fistful of nettles. He was lost to the euphoria and epiphany of it all.
The club was closing soon, and they pulled one another up and out of its gutters and through the doors like the dead punching fists out of their graves, to stumble into one another up the street as he followed the boy with the chemicals.
Charlie felt wonderful. Every conversation was intensely interesting and he wanted to have them all. He couldn't contain himself. He couldn't stop himself jabbering. His head was buzzing from such a lovely sensation kneading the muscles and trickling down into his belly like his insides were being hugged.
Charlie laughed against the boy's mouth, gripping Michael's hips and bucking him into the walls of cobbled alleyways. Michael's hands were on him, pressing himself hard against his jeans. His tongue opened his mouth, trying to keep the words from coming out; he didn't care to know who else might have been him before. Charlie understood completely now that what he'd set off to kill this night had been dead for some time now. He was appeased; he had found a lover he was not required to love, except for one single night. That was the problem with drugs—be that in the form of liquid, powder, plant or flesh—it leaves the sufferer in a fruitless search, chasing the unimaginable ecstasy of their very first high.
They guffawed with one another, jumping and leaping and stomping recklessly about the streets that had become their playground, wrestling and shoving at one another as they howled to the city lights like wolves at the moon, hurrying on closer into the sun. For a brief moment, ever so momentary, ever so minuscule, he realised that his arm was draped around a stranger's shoulder as he struggled on through the night with someone else. And it only reminds me of you, he thought. But then the wistful thought was gone as a bus passed, like blowing dust from an old storybook, once Michael flung his arm around Charlie's neck and he took ahold of his finger in two of his own.
He halted in his voyage for a minute as he glanced across the street. Michael leapt on down the sidewalk, unconcerned and smoking a cigarette as Charlie watched Imogen slap the cadaverous face of the boy standing before her. Trevor Hamilton's sly grin did not falter until she threw herself upon him, kissing him violently on the mouth until her fur coat bunched up and bared the milky skin of her back. She stopped, long enough for him to take her hand in his and they spun in a dance. They twirled together in the shadows of the light amongst the soft, peachy and harsh yellow hues of billboards and theatres. Their song was the pandemonium caused by the beeps of the horns from black cabs, bellowing like abrupt bugles as they trudged by them, slowly creeping by like large beetles, with the taxi men hanging out from inside, shaking aggravated fists at the cavorting pair, who'd found a ballroom in the middle of the street. Their hands linked and they swirled until they kissed again and fumbled their way into the back of the limousine.
This is who we are, Charlie thought pensively as the lovers disappeared behind smoke, fur, greatcoat and limousines. Everyone else walked the footpath, but we ran the roads. This would be a moment he would never confront her about; just as he would never ask Frankie Carrozza about Max Mayvolu and whatever had occurred between him and that poor lost soul. For everyone falls prey to their weaknesses in the end, and there are some things belonging to the human nature that are absolutely inexplicable, such as the desire to have a secret. A human drinks their poison and swears it tastes like wine. Yet, one must carry on ruthlessly and live, for it shall be the very first and the very last time they ever do so.
In a red telephone box, Michael and Charlie reloaded their veins with stardust, magic and sweeties for adults before they answered the call of the city again, beckoning them to roam it like lost princes who ruled the night, making of it an eternal carnival of lights, laughter and liveliness. It was a circus, in which every single performer fancied themselves the ringleader.
Michael couldn't recall where the van had been parked, and so they decided that when the time came they'd take the bus and meet up with the band in the morning. On they went, wandering through the streets with no intentions to return to shelter and sanctuary until sunlight creamed the dark to find raving boys with bad habits.
'Let us just keep touching! Let us just keep singing! Let us just keep sinning! Let us pretend the night has no end! Let us!' Charlie demanded as he drew his arms out to make wings of them and Michael guffawed, clutching tight to his back to keep Charlie from falling onto the concrete as they dashed across the Tower Bridge. Rowdy companions on a midnight adventure beneath the bright lights of the city, boys who almost knew each other whole for one single forever, telling tales of their hopes and dreams and scars.
Michael talked of his greatest high, which was when he'd taken DMT. It was a hallucinogen that took him away from his body and had him soaring past a void, entering a realm inhabited by celestial entities and odd elfish critters. It was an experience shared by many who partook, a sensation that felt like living through dying and seeing the great beyond that dwelled far out of reach from this mortal plane of existence. Many believed this to be a real place that could be visited for a spell by the aid of a substance; it had made a believer out of Michael, too. He seemed to be a boy who found reality to be no good, and dreams and hallucinogenic trips to be too much of it. Like a boy he'd once known, Michael wanted to be like James Dean; and Charlie, Charlie would always want the James Deans; and this one, the ragged, torn and unfinished masterpiece, would, perhaps, never see the light of the daybreak through twenty-eight-year-old eyes. This was what made Michael all the more mesmeric and tragic—that he was fleeting.
Charlie spoke briefly of his own greatest high, which was when he took the hand of an ominous boy, who couldn't be given a face aloud by his lips in too great detail or it would be much too great to behold. A boy who he had ran wild with through seasonal woodlands to the feel of the earth beneath his bare feet, where it always felt like summer. This was a boy whose body could only cage the ink of his tattoos on his flesh, with all of his atoms made up of love and war. An adventurous pilot of his own spaceship, who could never contain himself, trapped and enthralled in interstellar amongst the stars. This revelling entity had been his greatest drug; Charlie believed, too, that this was a real and untouchable, yet brief, realm.
'It's in your eyes, your danger,' Michael exclaimed, from a mouth that was quick to smile. 'How you tilt your head upwards, turning it to glance to the side of you with lips slightly parted to accentuate your most promising and favourable features; you've learned that talent from someone recently, though I do not know the boy from Adam. I do know that it is in your eyes. I can tell that you will always be somewhat dangerous.'
Sometime later, squinting beneath the florescent lights that were too harsh on him, Charlie sombrely said, 'They think I'm not well.'
'Well, I say you're fine,' Michael replied as he walked with him, shopping in the aisles of a 24-hour pharmacy.
Before dawn could approach, Michael led Charlie as Virgil led Dante through the layers of Hell, hopping onto a double-decker and taking him back to the loft he shared with the other four members of his band, eager to escape from the judgemental eye of the light of morn. Sliding back the large metallic door of the apartment, they found it empty of his friends.
There was unfinished works of questionable canvases on easels belonging to an impatient artist scattered around the corners of the open-plan and dishevelled penthouse. Opposite the kitchen and the living room area, a large bed sprawled directly beneath a very wide and very tall window; moonlight bathed the ruffled sheets in a soft blue glow under a heaven of fairy lights. Musical instruments sat clumped beside the bed—the designated spot for rehearsals. Charlie wondered where all the other housemates slept as he glanced around to the few remaining doorways.
He turned on a lamp in the corner as Michael poured two measures into chipped mugs from a dusty bottle of port; he took a swallow of his and set the rest of it on a crude and unloved desk. All sorts of busted sofas, beanbag chairs, floor pillows rescued from skips, and wooden chairs draped with blankets were sitting on top of many different coloured rugs stacked and placed about carelessly, disregarding any conserved decorative pattern that might have been suggested initially. The haphazard layout indicated that it was a place where music and body was worshipped, and very little else; it was no stranger to entertaining a wide variety of bonhomie party guests. Godless it was; even the mural of Jesus Christ painted by hand on the bare stony wall.
Michael lit a few candles to banish the dimness with illumination and disguise the faint musky scent of stale weed; indeed, there were plenty available to light, stacked on many hoarded tables to dance shadows across the vaulted ceiling and have them hopping from rafter to rafter.
An entire wall was dedicated to boxed shelves like cubbyholes for post, but it was filled with all kinds of paraphernalia that Charlie took an in interest in studying: drumsticks, grubby books, paintbrushes, jam jars and even more candles. Seemingly unfinished—or, rather, purposely inchoate—portraits of art lined the walls, undoubtedly painted by a roommate of the apartment, with favourable, crude and suggestive dictions of the male and female body hung alongside unfolding band, event and comic book posters tapped over the crumbly, stony grey wall behind. The ends of a party banner and a few wilted balloons dangled from the roof. Rather impressively, they had been placed remarkably high up, yet seemed to have proven quite difficult to remove whenever the celebrations had finished.
Charlie stood by the broad window and glanced out over the cityscape to see buildings painted lilac by the coming of the dawn. Looking to the Thames churning below like a river of molten silver, he breathed in the overlapping fragrances of the candles as he smoked a cigarette and watched the morning light pour over the rooftops; a pink and vanilla sunrise, like rhubarb and custard. He could hear nothing—not bird, or car, or critter or wind—but the soft acoustics of Led Zeppelin that Michael had put on the stereo. The scent of the boy engulfed him: the taste of liquor on his lips, the smell of smoke on his clothes, an aroma of homely redolences leaving traces on his skin and the sickly-sweet tang of hair gel on his hands. Cinnamon and apple fragrances perfumed the air from the candles, having him reminiscing of autumns and winters; both scents were overpowered by the distinctly recognisable smell of vanilla.
Suddenly, the boy and his nonpareil urbanity was behind him, his face nuzzling into the back of his hair until his body followed suit to press against him. He kissed softly at Charlie's neck as his fingers trailed slowly down the bare skin of his inner arm to take the cigarette from his hand. He took a puff, and then he put it out in a cup of watery paint.
Charlie turned to him and gazed into his eyes as he took ahold of the hem of the boy's shirt; they were as silvery-blue as the Thames beyond, a tsunami in them that flooded just enough to drown emerald fields and forests. He kissed Michael on the lips, as quick as the kill of an assassin, and then lifted the shirt up over his head to bare his body and accept the offerings. The biblical symbol tattooed onto his neck gleamed metallically in the smoky, shadowy dark; a wicked thrill filled him like an illicit substance, to sin so close to the crucifix; he was surprised to find it did not burn beneath his lips.
A volley of clothes had been cast about the loft soon after, as though they'd been caught up in a hurricane: a pair of jeans fell limp and broken across the radiator to die by those scrunched into the floorboards like two flowerpots, side by side. Two shoes went running as fast as they could across the floor as a third one left a print on the corner of a painting. One sock knocked over a yellow candle and cruelly extinguished its flame, another landed on a dried paint palette and two others got lost somewhere under the sheets. A shirt clung on tight for its life to a wooden beam above and the other disrupted the needle of the vinyl. A pair of underwear hung over a mannequin's head like a balaclava and the other got lost chasing after the missing socks in the urban, drab and grey bedsheets, the shade of lonesome, stony mountains. They smelled of lavender, cigarettes and sex, and were cool as a lake against the bared body.
They faced one another on their knees on the bed, knights set to jousting, as hands roamed and lips bled against the skin until their bodies entangled. The only music to play now that was the sounds of their sweet sighs. Charlie pulled back from the kiss, their bodies damp and warm, feeling the prickles of the hairs from the other boy's legs brushing against his own and a firm hand against the small of his back to keep him in position; they were all familiar sensations. The devilish angel of a boy was lost to him, his eyes tightly shut to the efforts of his work and pleasure; he might't hear, see or feel anything else at all. He'd gone on into that realm he spoke of that existed beyond the physical limitations of this silly little old world.
'Tell me you love me,' Charlie whispered against his peachy cheek, feeling the rapture of his redemption, until he thought better of the request and hid his hands in the shaggy hair of the boy. 'No ... don't. Whatever else you may say tonight—be it utmost damned or profound—do not tell me that.'
Charlie woke to the music of the city morning: a parade of horns blared to herald rush hour like a jungle of disgruntled parrots hooting angrily from the kapok trees, the pandemonium of a crowd of shoppers crying jubilantly and joylessly from below, the garbled noises of the freighters, hazardously swinging cranes alongside the bellows of burly men on the docks, and a robin chirped a delightful tune by the window ledge.
Michael lay sprawled and turned away on his front, a thin strip of the bedsheets protecting his modesty as the sun bled thick as treacle, spilling a golden noon down his back, drenching his hair with it and pouring pools to soak the oak floors with puddles of sunlight looking like spilt honey. A scent overwhelmed Charlie's scenes as he rose up and broke the shafts of light with his head and shoulders; it was the sweet and heavy smell of rotting apples and coffee beans, stewing from the cup of chocolate-coloured liquid set by the windowsill behind him that the boy must have brewed hours earlier.
Charlie wandered about the flat after giving the cold coffee a top-up of hot water from the kettle, careful of where to place his bare feet, wondering if the bandmates were home yet and snoozing, but as he cocked an ear, he heard nothing but the breathy sighs of the other boy he left deep in slumber.
He retrieved his clothing from their desperate attempts at escape the night before and got dressed. He'd a transient moment where he considered slipping back into the bed and waking his one-night-lover, but that wasn't how the game was played—that was against the rules. When it was a love that was only supposed to last for one night, they were not supposed to remain in the morning after loving them in the dark. To let it see the break of day beneath the sunlight was to tarnish what it was under the moonlight. This way, without giving more than forenames and faces, was perfect: a vague memory shared between two. Charlie couldn't see what else could ever be more intimate than that.
He did, however, shimmy over and kiss the spot between his naked shoulders, where angelic wings might have once sprouted before they had been stripped away; the boy writhed, tossing slightly in his sleep to acknowledge it from deep down in whatever factual or fictional dreamscape realm he wandered.
'Thank you,' Charlie whispered.
Before he departed, he left a note in blue paint on a bare canvas, because everything about him was blue: his eyes, his smoke trails, his jeans, his powder, his lips, his veins, his heart and his mind. And with his own colours, he helped take away the last of Charlie's blues. The message read: Come find me one day, where you once travelled beyond the void, where I may be ... just waiting.
Still quite drunk, Charlie sat on the train bound for Eton with all the other commuters and travellers. The mahogany beams and wooden furnishing of the carriage blazed in dreamy gold as tides of afternoon light splashed in to obscure his surroundings, devastatingly, dreamily and heavenly. Businessmen, businesswomen, students and families on day trips glanced at him occasionally, whispering approximated suspicions of where he might have been the night before, evidently deduced by the recognisable signs that embellishes the nightwalker and the nightcrawler like himself: the messy hair, the smell of booze wafting from him, the purplish bruising beneath his eyes that glowed the colour of plums, the dishevelled clothing worn from the evening before that was now turned inside out to show the tag, and the burrito he was eating for breakfast.