It’s 2:27 am. Flight 743 arrived at 2:14 am, Central Standard Time. It was twenty-one minutes early. My car was late, and the rental agency didn’t know how long it would be until it arrived. I decided to make the best out of a bland situation and kill some time.

Airport cocktail bars always have the most interesting patrons. I met a gentleman who worked in mutual funds. I didn’t know him personally, but my people knew his people. I had a vodka martini on the rocks, shaken, with two Spanish Queen olives. He had a Crown and Coke straight up. His name was Bill. He shook my hand in a meaty, Texas football player style. Our diversity amused me.

We conversed, and I must admit the conversation was amicable. I’m not saying that I’m a faggot or anything. I simply choose to talk to an intelligent and well-dressed businessman about equity index option portfolios and the pros and cons of Roth IRA’s over listening to some smelly fuck from Transgeria who can barely speak English.

It turns out we shared the same rental car company, and he was waiting on a ride as well. He was merely in town for the weekend, on business. He asked me if I had ever been to the Gateway City before. I could see my image in the mirror behind the bar, and even though I had a five o’clock shadow, the smile that crept across my face reminded me of the way my Mother smiled the moment she took my virginity away. I said yes I had, and that St. Louis had been my home for many years.

When my rental car became available, I offered Bill a ride to the hotel he was staying at. I reasoned that it wouldn’t hurt to give a possible future business associate a ride downtown. Who knows, he may decide to repay the favor with some good stock information in the future. One can never have too many assets, after all. However, I did have my own hidden, selfish agenda. I wanted to tell Bill a story. After purposefully spraining my ankle while helping Bill remove his luggage from the trunk of the car, he offered to let me come up to his room and put some ice on it. I graciously accepted his offer of generosity.

A short while and a few drinks later, Bill asked if I grew up in St. Louis. I informed Bill that I was raised in France in the late 16th Century. Bill didn’t believe me. He stood up and began to laugh. I informed Bill that if he wanted to hear the rest of the story that he would have to sit down, be still, and be quiet. He did so.

I sat back in my chair and thought about how to begin. I rarely tell this story, and so I like to ensure that I do not omit any important details.

"I believe I told you earlier in the morning that my name was Vincent Parker. While that is one of the many names I have adopted, my birth name was Vincent St. Croix. It’s spelled C-R-O-I-X, and that means that it’s French. I was born in 1576 in what would one day be the magnificent city of Paris. My Father, Rene St. Croix, was part of the French aristocracy. My Mother was from the Italian city-state of Genoa, which was on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Her name was Camilla Grimaldi.

"While my Father’s family was politically powerful, my Mother’s family was powerful economically. Genoa was a stronghold of the merchant class, and my Mother’s family ruled over their economic empire from some of the city’s finest estates. My Father wished to gain economic power, and to capitalize upon the huge profits amassed by the merchant ships of Genoa. I take it by your silence that you didn’t get the pun. Amassed? Ships? Sailing ships at the time had... never mind.

"Well, in addition to the economic power my Father gained, my Mother’s family was only too happy to marry her off to a French aristocrat. They now gained direct in-roads into the French political system. And while my Father always believed that he had gained more from the union than my Mother’s family did, he did not comprehend what a very, very special family he had become allied with. You see, Bill, the Grimaldi family has Benefactors. Long before I was born, these Benefactors granted the Grimaldi family with a form of longevity, if not immortality. It’s rather difficult to defeat the competition when the competition simply out-lives you, don’t you think, Bill?

"I know what you are thinking – how does this affect you, Vincent? You’re not a Grimaldi, you’re a St. Croix, right? Well, Bill, you need to understand that while my last name was that of my Father’s family, the blood of my Mother still flowed through my veins. And as my Mother was Grimaldi so shall I be in blood if not in name. Do you see now? The blessings of our Benefactors apply to me through my blood, not my name.

"My early childhood was… interesting. While I did spend most of my early life in Paris, we did on occasion venture to Genoa to visit with my Mother’s side of the family. It is worth noting that occasionally, when one’s family interbreeds enough through subsequent generations (thanks largely to our extended longevity), certain… less than pleasant abnormalities of the psyche become apparent. During one trip to Genoa, I stumbled across some genealogy records kept by the family. There were several inserts in the old text where someone had attempted to draw a family tree, but had given up due to the complexity of the task. When I first saw it I mistakenly thought it to be a child’s attempt at drawing a spider-web. My Mother, in case you’re curious Bill, was the product of a man and a woman who was not only his daughter, but also his great-niece. I dare you to try to figure that one out, Bill.

"As you can imagine, my Mother was slightly off-center. It began innocently enough. She would bring home various men who were younger than myself (even though they appeared to be older than me, but I’ll discuss that concept shortly) for hedonistic pleasure and pillow talk. The fun turned into an institution, and soon these boys were kidnapping derelicts and vagabonds for her. They usually tortured them in the cellar before cooking them for a late-night feast. My Father either didn’t know, or more likely didn’t care, as I suppose proximity to my Mother caused him to develop a penchant for pedophilia and murder. Don’t look at me like that, Bill. It’s not like he was a faggot or anything. He only fucked and killed little girls.

"Don’t worry, Bill. I’m a great deal more levelheaded than both of my parents combined. I learned from their mistakes, so that I would never repeat them. In these nights, you must understand that our Benefactors do not tolerate mistakes. I would not be where I am today if I were insane.

"Moving on to the end of my adolescence. I was educated in the finest institutions in Paris. I received all of the benefits of nobility. By 1605 I had become a young man. I know that you have probably done the math and are wondering how come I did not become a young man until the age of twenty-nine. Please keep in mind that our physical aging process has been retarded thanks to the blessings of our Benefactors. And so at twenty-nine I appeared to be but fifteen or sixteen perhaps. In this year I was tested, as are all Grimaldi, to prove my worth to the family. I was put on a ship and sent out to a distant colony call Montreal. In case you’re wondering, Bill, there were no puns in that sentence, even though I mentioned a ship.

"Montreal had just become a colony of European, (i.e. French) settlement, and I was sent to act as a representative for French bankers in Paris. The French bankers would invest more or less in the colony depending upon my recommendations. In addition, the Grimaldi invested some of their funds with these same French bankers. Therefore, my recommendations regarding future investment would either benefit or harm the bankers’ profits, and by extension the Grimaldi’s investments.

"I put my intellect to good use, and made the right recommendations. The family was not disappointed in me. Everything was going well in Montreal, and I loved every minute of it. Then, in 1754, everything went straight to hell. In Europe, they called hell the Seven Years War. In America, they called it the French and Indian War. I take it history was not your strong suit in college, was it, Bill? Don’t worry, I will explain it in simple concepts for you. Basically, the French and the British were fighting over territory. The Indians of America were allied with the French against the British. I know that it should be called the French/Indian and British War, but understand that we’re talking about a race of beings that records the birthday of an imaginary talking rodent in the annals of history.

"Anyway, if you’re expecting some heroic story of how I single handedly sailed a boat down the St. Lawrence River and fought off the British with nothing but my raw determination to succeed, then I’ll have to disappoint you, because I’m not going to blow wind in your sails like that. That one was a pretty easy one to catch, wasn’t it Bill? I don’t think I even need to explain it to you.

"What I can tell you about is when I was traveling on matters of business from Montreal to Quebec in 1761 and my caravan was attacked by Iroquois Indians who had mistaken us for a British supply caravan. The fighting was intense I suppose. It was somewhat difficult to tell from my position, as I was running into the woods as the rest of the caravan was being butchered. On an exciting note, however, one of the Iroquois Indians did follow me, and after a brief struggle we both went tumbling down a cliff, through several hundred feet of briars, and into a rocky ravine. Did I mention it was in December, Bill?

"The fall had rendered my tan friend unconscious, and so I gouged his eyes out with his knife and then slit his stomach open. I’m not sure how long I spent watching him die, because you have to understand, Bill - wristwatches didn’t exist at that time. And it wasn’t as if I enjoyed what I did, or that it was some sick form of premeditated torture and murder, it was just the first thing that came to mind. If I didn’t kill him he would have killed me. And I suppose I hastily reasoned that it’s rather difficult to kill someone if you can’t see him. Screaming unintelligibly in pain probably makes it difficult to kill someone as well.

"Well, I was still in bad shape, and my left leg felt like it was broken. Now understand, Bill, that I did what I did next out of necessity. I didn’t enjoy it anymore than any other normal person would have, but I had to do it to live. I just pretended he was a fallen deer, because everyone likes venison, right?

"Moving along past that unique and unpleasant incident in my life, I will renew the story in 1763, when I was comfortably safe back in Montreal. I sensed that the family was pleased with my aptitude for survival, and it brought a smile to my face to think that my great-uncle/grandfather was maybe telling my heroic tale as a bedtime story to my ‘cousins’ back in Genoa. Apparently now I was truly accepted within the Grimaldi, and I went through the formal initiation into the family. I was assigned my own Benefactor, who would bless me with immortality. For the sake of the story, Bill, we will call my Benefactor Mr. Strathcona.

"In 1764, Mr. Strathcona and the family saw a beneficial use for my skills in a colony developing to the southwest of Montreal. I boarded a ship that sailed down the Mississippi River. Once I arrived at the small colony, I became acquainted with my new business partners, Pierre Laclede and Rene Auguste Chouteau. That’s C-H-O-U-T-E-A-U, and yes, Bill, it’s a French name. These two French gentlemen were fur traders who wished to capitalize on the rich yields of beaver pelt that could be acquired in this area. As you can imagine, I was in my element. We got along well, and we should have, as they were financed by a fur trading company based out of New Orleans. Would you like to guess which Italian merchant family had a sizeable amount of funds invested in the New Orleans fur trading company, Bill?

"As an added twist, a small portion of Pierre and Rene’s financing came from King Louis IX of France. By the right of majority of investment, the family had more say over the development of the colony, but we do like to be discreet regarding our investments. Besides, don’t you think St. Louis sounds a little better than St. Grimaldi?

"Now comes the monotonous part, Bill. I’ll try to summarize the next couple centuries in the name of telling an interesting story. While I had come to adopt Montreal as a my new home, Mr. Strathcona and the family thought that I would be more useful in St. Louis, and so I strove not to disappoint them. Under my guidance, the fur trade in St. Louis was booming. By 1804 we were shipping furs down the Mississippi River to New Orleans on a constant basis. We were coming close to flooding the market. So I cut back on the trapping and skinning of furs and moved some assets into organizing boat-makers and acquiring waterfront property and buildings for boat construction on a massive scale. At the same time I organized the trappers into actual employees of our company in St. Louis, so that we could set the price at which we would pay for furs, as opposed to haggling with them on a regular basis. By 1818 I had hired a man by the name of Manuel Lisa to build a great storage facility for the furs, as opposed to the many small sheds they were kept in before. In this regard, you could say I took the initiative in creating vertical integration in the fur industry. Did you know they teach young collegiate students about vertical integration in college now, Bill?

"In addition, my vertical integration provided a way to transport our Benefactors up and down the Mississippi River. They could go from Montreal to St. Louis to New Orleans, or vice versa. Eventually, though, I sold out of the boat construction business when the first steamboat emerged in 1817. I really didn’t feel it was worth the investment to try to remain cutting-edge in the boat making business. However, being in the boat construction business allowed me to cross the waters into the shipping industry, and my shipping contacts allowed me to continue to secure safe passage for our Benefactors. Did you catch that one, Bill? I hope so.

"Since St. Louis was growing so rapidly at the time, I invested the money from selling off the boat construction business into a construction company. I hired my old associate Manuel Lisa to run the day-to-day operations for me. Once the manufacturing age hit St. Louis in 1854 our profits were nearly astronomical. The fire in 1859 (that destroyed fifteen city blocks) also helped out business, and is why you now see so many brick homes and buildings in St. Louis, as opposed to the old wood homes many people here originally had.

"Around 1860 I started to dabble in the iron foundries as a side project, and profits were decent in spite of the Civil War. I had several tunnels and underground chambers built into an iron foundry in order to secure safe haven for our Benefactors during the vicious fighting that took place in Missouri during those years.

"And there were other projects, too: the funding of Charles Lindbergh’s flight in 1927, the speak-easy I financed in the 1930’s, the Museum of Westward Expansion my construction company built in 1976 (my 400th birthday by the way), and so on. Finally the good life in St. Louis ended in 1992 when I was blessed with a different Benefactor for reasons unknown to me, other than that she had a use for me back in Montreal. For the purposes of the story, we will call my second Benefactor Ms. Valez.

"So, after 228 years, I went back to my second home – Montreal. I tied up some loose ends and kept contact with my assets in St. Louis. However, before I was able to work on accomplishing anything extremely interesting, Ms. Valez was deemed... unfit to be my Benefactor. Now I find myself assigned to a new Benefactor. For the purposes of the story, we will call my third Benefactor Mr. Polonia."

It’s 7:43 am. Bill is lying in front of me, face down and on his knees. His hands are tied behind his back. His nude form is pale in the soft light of the hotel room. His face is caked in blood, and his otherwise immaculate hair is matted to his head in a crude and oily fashion. A slit runs across his throat. Another wound is visible on his left arm. I sit there, naked and shaking, holding myself as the last drops of semen drip from my cock and onto the carpet. The smell of Bill’s shit on my cock is almost nauseating.

I bathed myself in Bill’s blood as it flowed out of his neck. It feels sticky and repulsive now. I keep telling myself that everyone likes venison as I chew. The sight of Bill’s asshole disgusts me. I push his body over onto its side. I cannot be insane. I am a very successful and powerful member of the Grimaldi family. I cannot be insane. This incident is nothing to be worried about. I am a Grimaldi. I can handle anything. I have several people in my employ who will clean this up very discretely and very thoroughly for me. They do this for me on a regular basis. It is nothing unusual.

Besides, it’s not like I’m a faggot or anything...

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