Capture

Frank’s face, it’s different now. Thinner. More bones and less tissue, a faint sepulchral blue seeping somewhere beneath the skin and pooling slowly in the hollows of his eye sockets, the aquiline recesses beneath each cheekbone.

From atop the concrete divider, he looks almost messianic, a translucent Christ silhouetted against the bruising autumn sky, motionless as the wind rips at his clothing – the fraying leather straps on his jacket and combat boots snapping viciously against his skin. Viper-like. Both his arms are outstretched, defiance or submission, maybe, and I can see the vulnerable blush of snaking veins wound from elbow to wrist. Straining to break through when he clenches and unclenches his fists.

In one hand, he’s holding the briefcase.

And me and Noreen, we’re breathless and numb, watching him. Watching one-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars worth of crisp, unmarked bills dangling precariously over the safety rails. The leather case swaying with the wind, high above the Toronto traffic.

The city stares down at us from the east, grey and incorporeal and hungry for self-destruction, dwarfing even Frank with the windows of its skyscrapers, row after row glinting in dull indifference. Useless and unseeing golden eyes strung up to mirror a lead expanse of clouds.

The crumpled Polaroid in my hands reveals Frank’s face as it used to be, fuller cheeks and skin that didn’t threaten to expose bone, sculpted lips curved gracefully into a charismatic smirk. From the minute I first saw him, I would have gone with him anywhere. Unconvincing blonde hair, brown already muddying the roots, electric hazel eyes that glowed panther-like in the semi-darkness, follow me. And this vacant urban dreamscape, this is where the road comes to a frightening close. Our fucking stupidity cementing the end. All the miles and miles of black macadam and Frank is a standing skeleton with arms crucified against the city’s hulking teeth. Nailed to the concrete and steel, seconds from throwing away our prize. Behind him, a streak of lurid red light crawls slowly up the CN Tower like blood filling a syringe.

In my cramped handwriting, the caption on the photo warns He will never for one fucking minute love you.

I wonder if it’s still true. Beside me, Noreen’s aviation-orange lips are pressed together so tightly that they bleed into one, her skinny eyebrows arching sharply inwards with anger and disbelief, and if he does it – drops the suitcase – maybe she will turn on him, maybe she’ll leave and never come back. And then there will only be me and Frankie.

Somewhere below us rises the sound of a siren, pulsing shrilly in the clear air as it passes through a cry and into a scream. I can feel the vibrations against the coating of my bones.

It hasn’t been me and Frankie since the first day, and I can remember every second of it, irrevocably burned into the neurons and synapses of my temporal lobe. Yesterday flickers ominously; it blurs and dissolves like ribbons of melting celluloid spilling through my head, my hands – but I know every minute of the day I met Frankie by heart. The smell of his clothes. The Technicolor whirlwind of costumes at a party, feathers and capes and Mardi Gras beads all glowing a thousand hues of purple and green and gold in the dusky evening air. The sight of him, a glowing seraph alone with a glass in his hand.

He was swaying drunkenly where he stood, the blue matrix of ripples reflected off the swimming pool surface combining with the fickle, faltering light from the paper lanterns to transform his face into a blurry simulacrum: sculpted curves of soft wax, eyes and teeth gleaming calcimine white.

I knew right then that he was something else. Scandalous, dangerous, out of control and good at all the wrong things, all the things I desperately wanted a taste of.

Through the crowd of costumed figures dotting the veranda, I saw only him. Standing there in unsteady silence, rocking gently back and forth at the edge of the pool, blue chlorine glow washing over his face in indistinct waves. The mark of a fist blossoming wine-red and purple across his cheek, swollen split lips kissable with the sweet sting of blood. A black military uniform, leather combat boots impeccably laced, soles grinding against poolside concrete as he moved.

A scarlet swastika banded ominously around his left arm.

He was so far away, yet his lips were whispering, pressing into my skin like a dull edge, follow me follow me follow me.

I couldn’t breathe, doubling forward as an aching pressure filled my chest.

Watch me. Follow me.

When I looked up, he was gone, only a subtle trace of him lingering in the night air. Cherry blossoms. A bitter taste in my mouth. The sound of wings beating in the dark, just outside the halo of light protecting the piazza.

Drunk, the night blurred into a fractured mosaic. Laughing mouths, mixed drinks glowing behind glass. I staggered. Pushed past a man, tripped over a girl lying doll-like, foam on her lips. Lurching inside, the walls moving around me, breathing warm and wet.

And he was there, face up on the battered couch, crushed in the grip of a blonde twice his size, all rippling muscles and square ridges of bone. His eyes and hair and teeth shone too bright in the humid semi-darkness, jagged burning white obscuring the room like the swaying lanterns had tattooed ribbons of light across my retinas. My head spun. His fingers were digging so deeply into the blonde’s arms that I could feel the pressure on my own skin, bruising raw muscle and crushing capillaries into diffuse carmine starbursts.

Follow me, follow me. Let it destroy you.

The blonde’s eyes were black holes amid a sweat-slicked face: sluiced dark by watercolors, sultry and toneless with lust. I could see the cords in his neck. They were kissing with more teeth than lips, a pale streak of blood smeared from Frank’s mouth across one cheek like a matryoshka’s blush, the blonde hissing in pain as bite marks blanched white and slowly reddened on his collarbone. His strong hands tightening their grip, imprinting shoulders.

My body ached. The dull throb of neurons smoldering below the skin.

Frank was slick and hot and glassy-eyed, pulse alight as he squirmed, and he raised his arms seductively above his head as the blonde ripped open his jacket, his sweat-dampened dress shirt, motions roughened into violence by uncontrollable, overwhelming need. Their hips moving together as Frankie arched his back in frustrated pleasure, tangling his fingers in the blonde’s hair and contorting his flushed face into an expression of shattering want. But for just an instant, a breathless, triumphant smirk hovered on his lips, turning my blood to flame.

He was putting on a show.

He was putting on a show, a macabre marionette nearly lost in the smoky dimness of the room. White Christmas lights glittering palely where the walls met the ceiling. His small body smothered, crushed against the cheap frame of the sofa but still so electrifyingly alive. Wide eyes and parted lips.

The blonde was pinning him down with more and more force, suspended over him in a blur of muscle and sweat, and with terrible suddenness, Frank lunged for exposed neck, oblivious to the handprints forming pale red on his chest. The crunching sound of bone working against bone. Teeth met sensitive flesh and the blonde almost went over the edge, head thrown back, groaning “Unngh, Frankie…” with muted hysteria tattooed in his eyes. Just for that moment, the balance shifted.

Strangers pressed around me on every side, all lost in separate catacombs. The walls swelled with heat and cigarette smoke. I couldn’t tear my eyes away despite the eerie burning in my chest; their bodies were the only reality in the room.

It wasn’t long before Frankie lost it. His fingers were blanched white on the blonde’s biceps, the muscles in his own arms like exposed cables. Eyes bloodshot, slicked with tears. Insane with frustration.

As I stared, my thudding heartbeat chipped away at the inside of my chest. I had never understood self-destruction like I understood it then. Breathing hoarsely, pinwheels spinning electric in my eyes, I watched him ignite, pushing the limits of his body until every muscle quivered in taut resistance. The blonde’s hands stayed steady. Unyielding. His face didn’t change, even as Frank sunk his teeth into his own lip and moaned breathelessly, a thin line of red trickling along the crease of his lips to stain the corner of his mouth. Oblivious to the blood, he moaned again, a sick animal sound that made nausea spread from my stomach to my legs and arms. I was reeling. The moans became whimpers, plaintive and frightening, growing louder and louder in the damp room. There was nothing recognizable in his eyes.

I wasn’t the only one looking now. His desperate hysteria was everywhere, uninhibited and unbearable. My ribs ached, threatening imminent collapse; the walls flinched dumbly at the intrusion. Drunk stares were everywhere, waiting.

The blonde growled, words harsh and unintelligible, and then somehow he was standing, pulling Frank off the couch after him like a wilted doll. Still gripping his arms with vise-like fingers. Frank let out a sharp, unsteady laugh that could have been a sob, and the blonde clenched his jaw – skin visibly hot with unfulfilled desire – dragging Frank’s unresisting frame through the mass of bodies towards the stairs. Combat boots crushing broken strings of beads against the hardwood, a million fragments of metallic color scattered across the dull floor.

I swayed, nauseated, in the aftermath.

Follow me.

I couldn’t move. The room was pulsing, condensation shining on the red walls like the inside of an aorta. Like being trapped inside a heart. Bill Nye, the fucking science guy.

The image of Frankie’s split lips was burned on the inside of my eyes, a high-contrast clip from a porno that I couldn’t forget. Whispering, whispering. On my skin and in my head. A taste in my mouth, something so different than anything I’d ever had. Cherry blossoms, glossy black feathers, Mardi Gras beads. Drunk, the room shivered and lurched in cardiac arrest. I don’t know when I hit the floor, but his name was still on my tongue, a foreign sound that set every nerve in my body on fire.

Frankie….

Follow me, he whispers. Self-destruct.

That was day one. Frank and me.

The next day, there was Noreen.