Lawrence Grimmel
Tortured artist
Italian
Ooo.. The mafia
Posts: 75
(6/21/07 12:41 pm)
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A Sandy Hell
April 30, 304
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Originally by Don Calogero:
Sand blew around Don Calogero as he wondered farther into a desert that seemed to last forever. It stung his eyes and embedded its granules in his skin. Sweat poured down his rigid Italian face by the bucket load. Every muscle in his body was tense, and to make it worse, he was wearing a silk jet black suit. He licked his parched lips, silently hoping that he would stumble across an oasis. There was no such luck. Instead, an infinity of reddish sand still loomed before him. This sandy hell was determined to take his afterlife, but he wasn't going to let it. With whatever reserve his muscles possessed, he trudged on, while the blazing sun still spewed fire across the landscape.
A Few Hours Later
How long has it been... The thought turned over and over in his mind as he approached what looked to be the first sign of civilized life that he had seen since dying. An Arabian-Esque Village was now standing directly in front of him. His tongue surged at the thought of cold water rushing through his cotton mouth. He couldn't ignore it, even though his mafia instincts warned him that this place wasn't to be trusted. His distaste of anything Arabian was apparent as he surveyed the inside of the City. Those towel wrappers had crossed him once, and he never made the mistake of trusting them again. His mind flashed back to his childhood. The sound of AK 47s filled his head as he relived his father’s last moments. Those bastards will pay…. he silently swore again as he came to the first building that interested him. Right now though, his priority was staying alive. Revenge would come later. A neon woman’s legs blinked above his head, trying to lure him into a sleazy strip club. How appropriate… he said aloud. Not worthy of trust or family… He mused about the Arabians. Oh well, he consented. Right now, he needed a drink, and this was where he would find it. Feeling slightly defeated, he opened both doors and walked in. The two door entrance was yet another effect he had always used. When both doors were opened, all attention automatically went to the entrance. He enjoyed the respect that he commanded. Starkly clothed women spun around on golden poles as pathetic shrews of men dumped money onto the stage hoping they would remove those strings. Whores he said in his clearest Italian tongue. They didn’t interest him in the least. His respect for women wouldn’t allow him to enjoy such a pathetic display of them. Turning his head back toward the bar, he made a note that he would own this club in no time. After ordering a glass of fine wine, he wondered to the back booth. As the rouge liquid flowed down his throat and quenched his thirst, he began to pay more attention to his surroundings.
No one here really looked threatening, but appearances could be deceiving. His hand slid down instinctively to his side. One of two genuine gold Desert Eagle Pistols handle grips filled his palm. These trusty ladies had been here for him during the best and worst of times. A small smile crept across his face as he realized for the first time in the afterlife, he was level. His hand continued to slide up and down the handle and the hammer of the gun. He had taken care of his basic needs, now it was time to move on to the agenda. Where would the two guards have gone in this world? He wasn’t even really sure that they were here. However, his pride kept him from admitting defeated. The priority list began to form in his mind. I’ll need a few allies, some form of guide, weapons, and a small empire for financial backing. [i/] If there was one thing that his time in Italy had taught him, it’s that he needed friends and money to pursue missions. Before anything else could be created, he had to have some power. He began to plot a rise to the top, but was interrupted as someone approached him…
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Lawrence was angry by this point. It took a lot to get the gentle artist riled up, but now, the owner of the Al-Shama Strip Joint had royally screwed him over. Fifty life size paintings of the strip club’s lovely ladies had been done in the most tasteful style by the artist’s loving hands and now the owner was refusing to pay for them. The time and the money that had gone into the supplies for the paintings would cause the balance to merely break even for Lawrence anyway! The tight fisted old man who owned the overly successful club barely paid the girls enough for their hours that they put it, but it was there choice to work there. The owner had come to Lawrence, placed the order, delivered the girls – five of them a week for ten weeks – and knew damn well that the man deserved his money for a job well done. The work was impressive, but the glowering anger on the artist’s usually gentle and compliant face was even more so.
In a change from the usual, Lawrence actually had on an outfit that was neither ripped nor torn, neither painted on nor stained with primer. The shirt that he wore was perfectly pressed, business like in nature, yet somehow still soft and casual looking. Coupled with black slacks, the artist looked his part, suave, cool, and expensive, even though he was far from composed at the moment. His voice was raised as he yelled back and forth with the owner, his arms pointing to the paintings that already dressed the walls lovingly. Women in clever costumes that merely accentuated their beautiful bodies, rather than exposed them violently were pictured smiling coquettishly or almost innocently, depending on the subject in the painting. Now that he had lost his temper, the accent that rung of Italy, of Sicily, of spaghetti and pizzerias was as strong as it had been the day he was raised in that environment. A spattering of curses was all that could be heard as Lawrence shouted. “You WILL pay your balance sir or, I’ll take it out of your money-loving ass. This is bullshit! Complete and total merda. Nessuno me lo ficca in culo! Vaffanculo! … Affanculo” The curses continued on in bitter Italian as the artist lost his bearings and regretfully, his composure.
Then, he felt the shoving come from the Arabian owner and the flames in his eyes exploded. How dare that fat bastard of a man? For a moment they grappled until the owner was screaming like a woman and Lawrence had dropped him to the ground. The artist never even saw the two security guards coming, however, he did feel the impact as his body was lifted, thrown, then smashed into the wall above Don Calogero’s booth. The breath was knocked out of Lawrence’s wiry body and he slid down, onto the table, where he sprawled out and let out a low grunt. For a moment, the world spun around him and he rubbed his head, then looked across the room at the laughing owner and scowled, then growled. Looking over at the man in the tasteful suit, he gave a sore, awkward grin. His voice was embarrassed and the whole event made him feel like less of a man.
“Eh.. Heh. How is your evening going?”
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Originally by Don Calogero:
As the Don finished off his last drops of wine, he couldn't help but overhear the sounds of a business deal obviously going bad. Loud curses and voices carried into his booth, allowing him to catch little snippets of information. The one thing that did make his hair stand on end, though, was when the artist began to spew Italian curses. His ears almost bent themselves around the booth as they continued.
The mafia leader began to take a vested interest as a small scuffle broke out. Before he could stand up, the artist had slammed the owner to the floor. Calogero smiled as he began to see his favorite Italian trait. Rage. The fight quickly escalated as the cowardly owner began to scream for security.
Femmina he silently cursed. The owner fought like a woman. He clearly lacked the Italian pride that both of these men held.
As his rage also slowly started to build up, the artist was slammed into the wall above his booth by the two ruffians. The artist bounced off it like a rubber ball and landed on the table. Trying to maintain some composure, he let out a half greeting to the Don.
“Eh.. Heh. How is your evening going?”
“I saluti, si mi chiamo Don Calogero,” he introduced himself in his finest Italian dialect. “My night's getting back into the order that I like. You however seem to be having a tough time. I'm sure you're familiar with the title of Don and what it implies. I was wondering, do you need any help il mio amico? I'm most willing to provide you my services in extracting the money from that owner. It seems he's not quite as respectful of the arts as we Italians are. We can help him realize that it's in his best interests to pay you his debt. While my empire is nothing compared to what it was, I'm still capable of conducting some business. So what part of Italy are you from, anyways? I recognized that Italian curse from anywhere. It could only have come from the mouth of a true countryman.”
As he said it, he helped Lawrence off the table and dusted off his clothing and extended a hand as a gesture of trust and friendship.
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It was as if a fist had caught him in the stomach right as he regained the ability to move. Lawrence was on his feet again but he felt like the world dropped out from under him. He stared dumbly at the elegant man in front of him and his hazel eyes dilated, went blank as he slipped into another time and place. The accent, the bundled nerves underneath fine silk, and the suave sophistication were too reminiscent of a man who had once called himself the Don. Don Grimmel. When the man questioned if the title “Don” was familiar and his question hit closer to home than he ever would have realized.
The smell of fire was in the air as Lawrence approached the house of his painting mentor. The man was old, probably around seventy years old but still had the eye of a much younger man. The young Italian was his prodigy, his finest masterpiece, and his closest companion. Though Lawrence was only seventeen years old at the time, he showed greater progress and promise than any of the old artist’s pupils. He loved him as a son and as a friend, as well as a future son-in-law, or so the man dreamed. It wasn’t very likely to happen because his student and his daughter had very different views on things, but Lawrence’s mentor could only hope that his once bitten, twice shy offspring would find solace in the quiet, handsome artist. It was a selfish dream, that a girl of only sixteen with one child already would find both a lover and a father for her bastard kid. Then again, Rosa had always loved fireworks. The flashy men with the flashy cars and the flashy suits and the flashy guns—Wait, that had been the part she hadn’t bargained for when she started dating Nikolas Grimmel, the oldest son of Lawrence’s mother and father, on the sly. After meeting him, Rosa had been smitten instantly because he lived the life she could never have, the wealthiest of all the families in their small town. He had the house, the fabulous parents, and that one weird brother no one really talked about. She could ignore that fleeting misdemeanor, as long as she hooked her claws into the suave, older man and wormed her way into his heart. Unfortunately, Nikolas got a bit too mouthy one night after a heated session of lovemaking and Rose found out what ‘business’ his family was into. Not many in the town knew where the Grimmel family’s wealth came from and those who did, didn’t say anything about it. If they did, they were silenced, along with anyone else who had heard the words spoken. When the girl found herself pregnant, she told the boy and he immediately denied knowing her, seeing her, or sleeping with her. After all, his people kept their noses clean and they sure as hell didn’t have illegitimate brats. The strangest thing about the entire situation was, Lawrence adored the child he didn’t know was his niece. After painting with Rosa’s father, he would frequently play with the new, pink faced baby girl and coo at it in his soft Italian accent, the words mixing with English that his mother had taught him. That’s the reason why his mentor hoped, dreamed, wished, pleaded with God for his daughter to fall for the soft spoken brother of the ignorant Nikolas who she still craved day and night, but especially during the nights.
The acrid smell of smoke made Lawrence cringe and set his light green eyes to burning as soon as he approached the crowded, narrow street where his mentor had his tiny studio. The lithe boy broke into a full out run as he realized the smoke was billowing from the stairwell he would have to ascend to make it to the flat where Rosa, her tiny baby, and her father lived together. He pushed past firefighters and police officers to get into the burning building where no others would dare tread, even though they could hear the blood curdling screams of the infant trapped inside. A look around the studio apartment revealed that his mentor’s throat had been slashed as well as Rosa’s as the smoke poured in. A trashy cradle held a wailing baby and the soft handed artist reached into it, snatching the child up just as the bottom of it began to ignite with the biting flames. Whoever had done the hit today hadn’t had the balls to kill an innocent child with his bare hands, so he had left the fire to do his work for him. Crushing the shaking, sobbing baby to his chest, Lawrence escaped the building along with his unknown niece. He would never know the truth about the unharmed, dark haired child that he cradled in his hands, placing kisses over her red, squalling face and begging her softly to hush, hush now, Lawrence was there. He could remember bowing his head as he handed her to a female rescue worker, tears in his eyes as well as trailing down his cheeks. Men don’t cry, faggot. Men don’t cry, his father’s voice repeated in his head and he wiped the tears away with the back of his hand roughly, then looked up to the high brick building where flames where beginning to exit the windows like men trying to escape, tearing at the shabby curtains and shattering the glass as they went. His eyes closed and tears leaked out once again as he watched his past, his future, his present explode into flames but when he opened them…
All he could see was the face of the man he’d just met. An angry shiver ran through the artist and though he’d not noticed it, his hands were clenched into fists. His mind hissed angry, venomous words, “Siete amico di mine – You are no friend of mine” Yet, he desired to know more about this man and ached to hear about his home. About his Italy.
“I need no help and I am not your friend. People like you are friends of no one. Though, I’ve had enough fighting for one night and I’m not a fighter by spirit. That is not to say that I can’t fend for myself, it is to enforce that I am able to handle my problems in a more intelligent matter. Unless I am dealing with an intelligent person. ”
Lawrence’s eyes cut sharply at the owner of the strip club before he slid into the booth and took a deep breath. This man knew not his history or the things that had happened around him, and finally, to him. If this man assumed where he was now was hell, the artist wished to spit on him and laugh, then murmur that he should rot in hell for eternity. A hell without strip clubs. The artist met the eyes of the Don and a snarl almost sounded from his throat. Italian eyes, the eyes of his father. Lawrence signaled for a drink, any drink, it didn’t matter, something hard that packed a punch. His next word was pronounced with care, with love, and in the rich flowing Italian accent which Lawrence tried so very hard to ignore and to hide.
“Sicily.”
He had no idea how time in this place worked, if the man before him was from years before his father’s rule or from years after. Perhaps the Grimmels had been overtaken in their pursuits. Perhaps, after Nikolas took possession of the Mob, this family had overthrown them or perhaps, this man had never heard the mention of his name, a name that had struck fear into the eyes of those who had double crossed them only to have those same eyes carved out with a sharpened blade. The silence grew between the two men like a crevice in the side of a mountain and then became gaping, gnawing, sucking the oxygen out of the air before Lawrence spoke again. His voice was raw with emotion, pure hate as well as a bit of fear, respect, but hatred struggled to the top and overpowered the other two.
“The only thing the word Don implies is murder. Organized murder. They say the Mob is here to protect our country, our people, our friends and family but I saw nothing but murder and the blood drips from my hands to this day. Not because I participated in the killing of innocent people who had merely fallen into the web of my family, but because I didn’t put an end to the madness while they all slept at night. Cowardice and love for a family who couldn’t love anyone but themselves and the money they brought to the table kept me from slitting each of their throats with the exception of my mother. She was an innocent tangled in a spider’s web and though she never died as far as I know, I still have the blood of her hopes and dreams on my hands. Lucky, some called me. Unfortunate, I was. Unfortunate enough to be born into the hands of a Don, Don Grimmel. Nice to meet you—”
The artist made a vivid hand gesture of one who was introducing a king, an unfurling with one silky smooth hand.
“I am Lawrence Grimmel, the murderer of my father.”
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