Dead Man

[Levi DAmico]

This thread is back-dated to February 23rd 2018

A Friday. And by all accounts, not a particularly special day – save for the fact that it was the end of another working week. After just a few hours of mind-numbing toil, the average folk could throw off their shackles of obligation and embrace freedom once again.

He didn’t know what that felt like, though. Not really.

Even when he was among them, he was never really among them. There was always that invisible line; a wall that separated him from society. A set of moral codes, unspoken rules, and grave penalties reminded him to keep away from that line. But it was never as sombre as it sounded; the indoctrinated never bleat about their lifestyles.

They were better than everyone else. They were awake, they knew the truth, and they were powerful because of it. They had their fingers on the pulse of the world and could sever those veins or leech from them inconspicuously. Whatever they wanted. And he had worked hard – fought hard – to sit at the table of the most worthy amongst those who were the most worthy.

Until it all fell apart.

He could blame a lot of things, a lot of people. He could have pointed the finger at any one of the problems – hell, he’d had long enough to think about it now. But it always came back around. In the end, he knew who and what was responsible for everything that had happened to him. But for once in his long life, he had no idea how to fix it.

His footprints were ash, his home a cemetery. He had nothing and no one left to remember him. To the woken eyes of the world, he was a dead man. Except he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. He didn’t know how to set his soul to rest. He’d spent twelve months in shadows, but remained separate from it.

In all that time he’d expected to go crazy, to start hearing voices – maybe he could have learned something, maybe some of those voices would have had some helpful suggestions. He was open to debate. After such a long spell of silence, he would have welcomed the break from the monotony. But ultimately there was nothing.

It was just him and the darkness. And he was tired of it.

The process wasn’t clear, the granular details remained elusive, but the facts – for what they were – spelt it out for him. Levi D’Amico had returned from the fire and the fade. Though, the reality wasn’t as triumphant as it all suggested. It was less of a phoenix rising and more of the shallow start to a zombie apocalypse. Because just like those reanimated cadavers, he no longer had a purpose to live, just a hunger he had to satisfy.

Impossibly silent footsteps carried him forward. The darkness stripped away and the world pieced itself together as if it finally remembered how to just be again. A cement road rolled out like carpet, brick built itself upon brick, became embedded with pitch and golden glass, and stretched out to reach all around him until it met a navy sky. And as he approached the open maw between these two spire-like buildings that had built out of nothing, the perfumed melody of a bustling metropolis flooded in.

Like visiting an old memory, Levi paused to absorb the scene. He had not seen a semblance of light in around a year and now a fog of colour and movement breathed and waltzed and yelled about him. An animal – whether prey or predator – might have cowered or retreated at this sudden assault on the senses, but Levi felt nothing, not even enough to comprehend why he didn’t feel it.

The staunch Italian stood for several unblinking seconds. Passers-by gave him a wide berth, threw a glance, and made a comment or two. Society couldn’t blame them for their reactions; they had witnessed what looked to be a six foot two mannequin appear suddenly at the perimeter of an alleyway. With skin the nature of granite, eyes as dark as umber, and a black suit that shaped him in stiff angles, the only thing to suggest he was sentient was the dishevelled mass of black hair that framed his surly face.

By the time a fifth person had walked past and struck him with a wary glance, Levi had shaken off the nostalgia. His eyes followed theirs, causing his head to turn as if he’d been snared by a fishing wire. Yet when the connection broke and the passer-by quickened their pace to flee the area, Levi was still watching them. He watched until they became just another face in the crowd, a face he wouldn’t remember, before his focus snapped back to the world in front of him.

He clenched a fist and felt the tingle of misfiring nerves graze the inside of his palm before coming to rest beneath the cuff of his grim white shirt. This familiar thing wrenched the corner of his dry lips upward, and he tested the sensation again and again as if its presence could anchor the thought of existence to him. It was a funny scenario to be in; to be alive when dead and to be the same even when everything else had changed.

Levi had never seen the benefit of living in the past, actually. There was certainly merit in learning from history, but becoming a relic – something that had been, had its time, and lost its use – nah, that wasn’t for him. He had always had one eye on the past, his feet in the present, and one eye on the future. But figuring out the future wasn’t always so straightforward. Clairvoyance wasn’t a skill he had been born with, but he had learned to tap into the flits and flickers of the world’s pulse, to learn its rhythm, and get an idea of what could be.

He had never shaken his first premonition.

He had seen that it would come down to a choice. And in the end, Levi knew that he was connected to that man through death just as much as they’d been connected through life. One affected the other. It demanded the other. He’d never had a choice. He couldn’t be one giant disappointment. Not again. Because it had always been a game in that man’s eyes; their lives, their souls, their wants, dreams, and ******* fears. Everything was a paradigm toward success and failure, toward moving forward and being stuck where you were.

Standing still never got you anywhere. So the Italian started to move again. He joined the fog of light and colour, becoming a stain on it, and stirring through it like a shark through a bait ball. There were other predators in the mix – just like what they say about always being six feet from a rat; the same was true of Vampiri. And while these blood suckers always seemed to be aware of one another, it didn’t always amount to anything where the umber-eyed man was concerned. Besides, his thoughts were trained on old habits, such as working up a check list in his head.

Action number one: acquire cigarettes.

While the Italian always had a preference for Marlboro, he would just about smoke rolled up fig leaves from the Garden of Eden. He wouldn’t call their condition into question either. It was difficult to state with any certainty that those toxins affected him in the same way that they used to, but he’d been smoking since he was thirteen and it was a habit more ingrained in him than making check lists.

Action number two: feed.

A Vampiro can withhold his appetite for only so long. In Levi’s case, he had mostly avoided drinking from humans. There had been an unfortunate event around the night of his turning, resulting in a small unit of soldiers being expunged from history, but he validated this act as one made by a youth. Of course, he had savaged a few unwitting fools in his time as well, but their exsanguination was out of rage, not hunger. And it certainly had never been a case of losing control.

Action number three: find shelter.

It would no longer do to return to familiar haunts, but neither could he remain exposed. He would need a base of operations again. But as thoughts strayed to what he would be defending, it became gravely apparent that a fourth action would not be so easy to prescribe and tag a checkbox to.

In business, having no ******* clue what you are doing and deciding to trial and error your way through, is called a discovery phase. The success of these phases is predicated on having a place to start, understanding the way forward by testing and learning, and having a steely will to obtain that ultimate goal (once you have learned what that is, of course). In the meantime, the Vampiro understood three basic needs and was determined to find the fourth in due time. He would find his niche again; he was patient, talented, obstinate, and had nothing left to lose.

And besides, if you can justify spending an entire year dreaming in shadows, you can justify getting a packet of cigarettes as your first port of call.

With the deftness and speed of a sweeping gull assaulting a beachgoer over a deep-fried treat, Levi had managed to lift a stranger’s wallet from their unguarded pocket, disguising the theft with a stiff collision of shoulders. Without breaking pace, Levi examined the contents of the leather binder and retained but a fistful of cash before discarding it. Whether the victim became aware of this brazen act or not was no longer within the same realm of the Vampiro’s concerns for umber eyes had spied a convenience store just five feet ahead.

[Levi DAmico]

There is a reason for everything.

This is a philosophy that most people carry with them whether they are the spiritual sort or not, whether they believe in some omnipotent and omniscient man in the sky or a spaghetti monster. It is, perhaps, simply human nature to seek out the why of everything. This need to know has had mankind nestled at the top of food chain for millennia, because the ability to understand something intimately enough can teach you how to best destroy it.

There is a reason why cows point north. There is a reason why birds migrate south for the winter. There is a reason why the sun rises and sets every single day. And there was a reason why Levi D’Amico had become a Vampiro aligned with shadows and subterfuge, yet chose to bulldoze his way through the theft of a couple of dollars.

Heavy, determined footsteps carried him through the threshold of the convenience store, refusing to stop for anything. It would have been interesting, as a matter of fact, to see how someone could stop his march. Levi had not been so resolute in his focus that the call from the crowd had evaded his radar, but at this rate the evidence was circumstantial. One action merely coincided with another and he wouldn’t pause, or even falter, for what had the potential to be some form of misunderstanding. It’s not like he’d noticed anyone attempting to grab him and tug him back to the scene.

Instead, Levi approached the store counter and met the eyes of an overweight clerk, near staring the poor man into a panic attack – especially when those bleary blue eyes had flickered up and across to the security mirror. Humans had the right to be jumpy around their kind – as impala have the right to not want to integrate with lions. This was increasingly understandable when a Vampiro looked as Levi did; as if recently dug up. The Italian sighed, softly, and decided to muzzle his impatience, approaching this situation in the gentlest way he could.

First, he let his umber gaze break from the look of panic the other man was giving him and considered the shelf of provisions behind him. Next, Levi allowed himself to pause, beginning the process of wrenching that trademark frown from his features, before he looked at the pudgy sod again. It wasn’t easy, but Levi reminded himself that the man before him was more than a giant sack of meat and that his co-operation here could resolve action number one on Levi’s check list.

While this exercise could faithfully make the harsh Italian man soften and even warm the grim tones of his voice, it was difficult to ignore the obvious benefits of resolving both actions one and two in a singular movement. This indecision was clear enough to the store clerk, who while noticing how the room turned darker by the second, began to stammer as he talked.

“Can I help you?”

Levi made up his mind. “Marlboro reds.”

At that point the atmosphere changed, the tension slinking out of the door like an unwelcome spirit. The exchange of one forbidding product for another was carried out with tedious regularity and Levi even tipped the man, adding a quick thank you – in English – before heading for the exit. And just as nothing had been permitted to intrude on his journey into the store, Levi had assumed that nothing would halt him from enjoying a cigarette either. His hand burned pre-emptively, but he would wait until he’d at least gotten outside to light up.

The umber eyed Italian passed by the brunette like a shooting star – smouldering quietly in the atmosphere. It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed her exactly – he’d noticed her, he’d noticed the teen walking nonchalantly in the opposite direction sporting $300 headphones, he’d noticed the couple sitting at the park bench sucking face, and he’d noticed the dozens of other people all going about their business tonight too. Levi had noticed her, he just hadn’t really paid attention to her in particular. She was just another face in the crowd, one that didn’t want to be given focus to at any rate judging by the way she folded away her compact mirror before starting her tirade about the danger of cigarettes, of stealing, and doing it all under nose like he gave a crap.

Once she’d broken cover, however, she had his laser sights blazing directly on her.

The first thing to burn into focus was the outline of this woman; her height, build, and general colour scheme. After distinguishing her as the “Plane Jane” archetype with zero sympathies, Levi decided to sharpen the details just in case he really needed to. Brown hair trailed like vines down skinny shoulders. An over-sized sweater, pashmina scarf, and a pair of jeans adorned her demure figure favourably, but Levi’s attention focused on those steely blue eyes hiding behind thick frames, eyes which seemed to be staring directly at his chest.

For all the fire in her voice, for all the brazenness of her actions, Levi expected that she would at least look him in the eye as she chided him. Or should that be threaten? The potential made him smile blithely, not necessarily because he was looking to fight over a couple of dollars, but because he thought it might add that little something interesting to his return. Like adding chilli to tomato sauce – a little spice can make the mundane and traditional into an entirely new dining experience.

Only, it was a taste of déjà vu that had settled bitterly on his tongue.

When she finally did make eye contact with him, recognition struck him in the back of the head like the butt of a gun. Hannah Lynn. The Italian groused and exhaled a jet of smoke to the side of them both, his umber eyes following the trail. Suddenly he wasn’t so interested in the situation, even if he normally would have been amused at her sudden back-pedalling. After all, Levi had uncovered many a plot against him and usually enjoyed this part, the part where they try and explain themselves, justify their actions, then plead for mercy before the inevitable.

Hannah hadn’t exactly gone so far as to apologise in words, but the transformation from howling wolf into retreating whelp did suggest that she knew that barking at a dragon wasn’t wise. It could be said that she did try to explain herself, however, as she repeated a line of warbling speech – something about not doing something, he didn’t understand. It could also be said that she even tried to bargain with him, replacing her ire and accusations with sympathy and even some advice.

Whatever the case, Levi wasn’t really in the mood to deal with her. Not now. And yet, as he watched her turn, watched the woman’s back and her twitching honey-coloured hair retreat from him through a second cloud of smoke, he realised that he didn’t want to not deal with it either. This encounter just wasn’t over in his mind, not while he’d still had something to say. It was better now rather than later, better to cut the cancer out while it was nothing but a bud.

“They’ve tried that, but it didn’t work so well,” the Italian responded to her comment on the capability of guns. His tone was surprisingly neutral and matter-of-fact, as if they were talking about the weather. “Worked on Gino, though,” he added in a voice that was a tad more spiteful. “So… you know. You can forget about that contract ya had with him. Affogato nel suo proprio sangue…”

Despite his muted tone, Levi had spoken loudly enough that people within a two metre radius would hear him. That last part, however, that was for him. Spoken quietly and in a language he didn’t suspect many people could discern with expertise, because it felt like something private. It was a Family matter, and he hadn’t intended to share the nature of the man’s death in a bid to threaten her. That wasn’t the point. The point was to acknowledge it, even if it was just for him, because it still felt surreal. Like the very first time he’d lost a limb, but carried on like it was nothing.

He should have felt more than he did. Anger. Sadness. Disappointment. They existed within him, swirling about at the core of him, but in such bland and insipid quantities that he hardly recognised them. For ****’s sake, the Italian had felt more strongly about losing a pen.

[Levi DAmico]

Suddenly, the Italian felt like he was on a merry-go-round.

The pair circled each other, emotions clashing and ricocheting, only to come back for more. He wanted off this ride. So did Hannah. In fact, the entire street wanted shot of them as demonstrated by some nosy ***** who literally stopped in her tracks to eye the pair of them up. Levi had castrated people for lesser reproaches. Incidentally, he’d let motherfuckers go on living their happy, ignorant, pathetic little lives long after doing so much worse to him. Granted, Levi always settled the score in the end – never one to be in a vengeance deficit for a lifetime – but it was a wonder sometimes that he could keep the bomb of his rage from detonating in certain instances and yet not others.

Luckily for the nosy *****, Levi had kept a pin on his rage. She walked away confused yet unscathed as Hannah batted her away in a far more polite and controlled manner than the Italian would ever muster. As a matter of fact, he was still committing the back of the woman’s head to death glares by the time their not-so-private carousel began to whirl back into motion. Only, as Levi noticed when his umber gaze finally returned to focus on those steely blues, that the pace of the swirling **** machine had slowed.

Hannah seemed to want to call a truce of some sort, at least for now. He remarked the irony of having their first meeting in about a year be extended by a proposition of a business card – it was weird being on the other end, though. Levi stared at the piece of paper, an apathetic look on his face, not sure of whether he wanted a public brawl or a quiet, passive chat. Well, truth be told, if his preferences were to be considered at all, he would have opted for walking away from this scene altogether.

What more did they really have to say to one another?

From her perspective, it was a case of divine justice: he was a prick so he deserved what had happened to him. The grizzly Italian didn’t necessarily disagree, but that didn’t absolve her of her crimes. What had absolved her of her crimes was Levi’s pure and unadulterated indifference. He’d dealt with the source of their mutual problem already, and because Levi was far too familiar with the games that Gino played, he knew that there was an incredibly slim chance that the resigned physical therapist wasn’t being blackmailed or threatened into service.

On the other hand, he might have been missing out on an opportunity by just walking away. He didn’t feel enough to be an ounce curious in that moment, but Levi had a certain, fucked up, and endlessly stubborn kind of philosophy when it came to most things. Even if it bored the ever-living **** out of him, he’d push through until completion. This unfeeling phase of his was going to be forced into oblivion with the same dogmatic attitude. And so, after flicking the spent end of his cigarette to the ground and stomping out its cherry light, Levi accepted the slip of paper and her advice with a curt nod.

“Grazie…” The word poured out of him – natural, elegant, juxtaposed by the stoic mask of dark eyes and ashen skin. “Guess I’ll see you later then.”

Yet, the sturdy Italian didn’t budge – save to put the card away in his breast pocket. He had places to be, true, but he wasn’t the one who suggested he had to be elsewhere right this second. He stood his ground because he wanted Hannah to be the one to retreat, to surrender in his gaze. Maybe he felt like he deserved a little bit of respect, not just because it was her and she’d wronged him, but because he’d gone a long time living in hell and felt it his due to experience a contrast.

If there was one thing that Levi had learned well and had learned the hard way, it was knowing when to keep your mouth shut and when to open it. That wasn’t the same as the message taught to your juniors, a caution to speak only when spoken to, something to be drilled into them to win their compliance. Instead, it was about acknowledging the power information has over a man, and that power is about never having to say you’re sorry. This laconic lesson was rarely taught, but one that is ascertained through a series of unfortunate events; from those times where you regret ever letting your thoughts spill out of you so carelessly and for ever baring your heart and soul to the wrong person.

You couldn’t make every person you’d ever met sign a non-disclosure agreement. You couldn’t take them to court if they failed to keep to the terms of the contract either. Your best course of action was to pre-empt and to prevent, in order to protect. Which is why Levi rarely said anything incriminating – or much at all for that matter, because you never know how much back-stabbing potential some throw-away comment could have. Maybe it was a good thing in hindsight that he hadn’t said much to Hannah over the time he’d mistaken her for some cheery, attractive neighbour. Maybe it was best that he wasn’t saying anything to Hannah at that precise moment in time either.

In response to her objections, her mystifications, Levi lifted a casual shoulder and let it drop again. In his withered state, he was a little slow, but he could still outwit the best of them. He knew that this woman before him hadn’t been the same one he’d engaged with a year or so before. Whatever had happened, she was amongst his kind now - Vampiri - and that drew another line on the board under the category of reasons not to bother fighting her or killing her off. Besides that, Levi didn’t feel like she’d caused him enough trouble to even consider it, not exactly. She’d lied to his face once before about being called Heather and he’d responded by sending her a birthday card and gift. So she was a snitch for Gino? He really didn’t give a ****. Every fifth person that Levi had seen on the street had probably worked for that Sicilian ********. It was all flood water under the bridge to him.

People lie.
Everybody lies.
They’ve been lying since as long as they could form words and draw **** on cave walls.

Hannah had been right to say she was a saint compared to him, though. It was the fact that she couldn’t let this **** go as easily as he did which spoke volumes about her true character. That was probably what drew him to her in the first place, wasn’t it. This demon had a weakness for angels. Perhaps it was a defect born out of something as simple as maternal neglect, a craving to be loved and nurtured instead of being tried and tested his entire life. Or perhaps it was something a bit more malevolent than that, like a need to punish them for being happy. Because he had never been so blissfully, stupidly happy for so long before it was snatched from him. Because when they saw a farm yard, fertile for new life, he saw nothing but a barren wasteland.

It might have explained why his focus narrowed in on her like a wolf as she began to retreat. One uneven step and a momentary flicker of her eyes from those umber orbs made Levi’s body tense reflexively, as if he was getting ready to pounce on prone prey. Or maybe that was just his ravenous hunger taking over. Apparently his stomach had gone past the point of growling and was aiming to roar right through his teeth. But he wasn’t going to drink from her, or anyone else for that matter. People were disgusting creatures and he didn’t fancy the backwash of whatever was lurking in their systems. No. Once Hannah would be on her way, he’d sort out this starvation thing, and then maybe they’d talk more about whatever it was they had left to talk about a little later. Maybe she could explain why she found him such pleasant company despite every reason she had not to.

Levi’s stoic façade had cracked in that moment. He smirked, sneered, and broke his fixation on her. He listened to her walk away, until her footsteps drifted away like snowflakes, and then he cloaked himself in temporary darkness to cover his own departure.

As he walked the streets, he was consumed with thoughts. Avere un chiodo fisso in testa.

How decent of a job had she really done for Gino if she’d found Levi 98% enjoyable to be around? Clearly, she’d known **** all about him, or was trying to butter him up, extinguish the rage she must have known he was capable of. Gino had always warned people of the terse Veronese-Bostonian – like he was putting a label on a bottle of poison: Don’t drink. Levi always thought it was pretty insulting. If it walked like a duck, acted like a duck, and quacked like a duck – don’t treat it like a ******* canary. But getting common sense out of some people was like trying to get blood out of a stone. Maybe the phrase should have been updated at some point to acknowledge the total ******* decline of intelligence in the modern era, but it hadn’t. It probably never would be. And in a few centuries, people would question – if they could even summon the brain power – what the **** a common sense example even meant.

Maybe he could stand to make their kind extinct. Maybe after dinner...