The Creation of Frankie Carrozza

Frankie Carrozza and The Enchanted Secret Garden.

The four of them were wandering down a golden country lane, giggling and jingling like a parade, garbed in costume. Seraphina spun ahead of them all; demonstrating the five basic positions of ballet, in a ballet dress as softly lilac as moonbeams. Her ballet shoes were crystalized in gems like suds to match the bottle of Cristal champagne that dangled from her hand. Her pale pearl skin was decorated with dark fragile lines as if she had been cracked apart and pieced together with glue. Her hair fell wild around her shoulders in thick bouffant blonde strides, her lips as cherry red as her tights.

'My body is a temple and thy followers shall come to the worship.' She was announcing with all of her vim that swelled beneath her breast as they strode passed brambles, hedgerow and surfs of blue hydrangeas that led along amongst the trenches of ditches and into fields and glens beyond. Civilisation was not to be found near the Hotel California also known as The Cottage in The Woods housed at Finglas House.

'I am Aphrodite incarnate. I wander now with Apollo, Persephone...and Hades. I am the Air Stewardess of sexuality. Please take note of your emergency exits to your left and right, s'il vous plait monsieur et mademoiselle. This is a smoking aircraft, please buckle your seatbelts for safety for this shall be a turbulent flight. I am the conqueror of thrill and the destroyer of banality.'

She continued in this manner as they wandered the road, drunk on champagne and the joy of a brewing party. Frankie watched her dance, laughing heartily with the rest of the companions as he fixed his bearskin hat and adjusted the rapier by the side of his red militant uniform that made him up into a dusty Nutcracker Soldier; careful with his tongue as not to smudge the makeup that Trevor, Seraphina and Bethany had their part played in making it look like a hatch.

'Coquette as always, Seraphina Rose.' Trevor called as he snapped the bottle of champagne from her hands with a struggle. He was finding it quite hard to manoeuvre with the painted box around his midriff that hung from straps around his shoulder, painted with garish and frightful images of carnivals and circuses around the sides in slick, dark and peeling paint that made it look he might have found it in his dusty cobwebbed netted attic where it had been stored some years ago. His face was painted paler; more so cadaverous that it had ever been before; his eyes smudged circular splatters of black so that pale little silver slits of his eyes stared out from within the voids like two pennies just about the right amount of hauntingly. Blood splattered down his chin and down over the Victorian Chimney sweeper uniform he had donned; covered in soot, ash and crimson liquid.

'Perchance, are we nearly there?' Bethany Holiday inquired; tilting her head just the precise amount that unnerved Frankie in her garbs that decorated her as a chilling, black and white Edwardian porcelain doll amongst the gold and peach afternoon light. 'I do not mean to complain, it is just these dolly shoes are making it frightfully hard to trek in over stones, and I do hope that we are meandering in the correct direction.'

'You untrusting swine, Bethany Holiday.' Seraphina cackled back as she spun in circles so that her long pearls dashed around her throat. 'When has my direction ever been misdirection? We shall be there shortly, and we shall be jubilant, and drunk and joyous and everything shall be thriving, sensual, jolly and gay.'
'When has your direction ever been misdirection, you ask?' Bethany called as she linked her arm in Frankie's; untangling her bow from around his musket. 'When you decided we'd take a daytrip to the Cotswolds and we ended up in Leeds. When you blindfolded me on my birthday and said we'd be going to The Boston Tea Party for some macaroons, macrons and tea and dress fittings and ended up on a private jet to Bruges. When my mother wanted to have my annual yearly photograph taken in a sitting and you'd recommended a man who not only did not have a selection of clothing or costume to decide from, but wished for no article of clothing to be worn in the photograph whatsoever. I may not be a qualified expert in navigation Rose, but I would say those few, measly paradigms of such a vault of shambles and shenanigans that your misdirection has tumbled us into would perhaps certainly qualify as reasonable examples.'