Alessia "Seraph" Parisi

Tungsten · October 6, 2023

Prologue Far From Home

The orange sun bathed the rolling hills of Vinewood, as Alessia gazed upon the vineyards and mansions owned by her betters. “Not today,” she had said to herself, wishing for simple happiness. Like most, however, she would fall short of achieving this goal. Trembling, with a pistol at her side, she calmed her nerves. She wrapped her lips around the barrel of the gun, hopeful to destroy the mess she had become. For the first time since the death of her lover, she had found a moment of peace and clarity.

She had come to America at the early age of sixteen— early enough to become immersed in the culture, and early enough to become fluent in the language. But this was not her home, and she knew it. With everything that had happened, though, she also knew that she couldn’t go back. The eight years since she had run away from her home in Sicily seemed to be a lifetime ago. In a fit of rage and misfit angst, she had run off with a boyfriend who she had thought would be her protector. He had been a nice boy of eighteen— blonde hair and chiseled jaw. He had behaved with a chivalrous demeanor rare for his time, when they went abroad and found themselves in Los Santos seeking fame and fortune his knightly cordiality seemed the first to go. Within that next trying year, he had cheated on her during one of his masculine conquests— a clear attempt to compensate for his lack of manhood. Shattered by the turn of events and a world away from her family, Alessia found herself on the streets and struggling to even stay alive.

With her parents her other family members abroad no longer on speaking terms, Alessia walked a lonely path. Friends never came easy, given the histrionic tendencies stained onto her like tattoos etched in blood. There was little more that she wanted other than to return home to Catania, but with everything that had happened it was a pipe dream. She hadn’t heard from her family in years— perhaps they had forgotten her, or perhaps they thought she was dead. Either way, she held onto those few memories of home in the hope of some day returning.

Her luck began to turn in 2018, after two years living on the street, when she found herself in the employ of a local mechanic named Giorgio. He, like Alessia, had also come from Italy— albeit from the Northern parts she had learned to despise. Giorgio, a man of thirty, had come to America in search of opportunity. Like her, he had spent some time living on the street— and so, taking pity on her, offered her shelter in exchange for an honest day’s work cleaning up his Garage. As she cleaned, she watched; as she watched, she learned. Before long, she was working alongside Giorgio and learning the tricks of being an auto mechanic. Before long, she found herself dating Giorgio— despite the age difference, they seemed to get along fairly well.

Giorgio spent most of his time working overtime in the garage, trying to pull in extra money to send back home to Italy. Like Alessia, he had poverty-stricken family back home. Unlike her, however, he had an obligation to support them with the fruits of his labor. With the little spare time he had, he would frequently spend it working on various project cars. His crown jewel was a restored 1971 Corvette Stingray, and he frequented car shows with it. Alessia knew that her new boyfriend was a bit of a braggart when it came to his project cars. His work was his passion, and he put every shred of his being into that which he enjoyed most. He was also heavily involved in the car club scene in Los Santos, which eventually led to his increased involvement in the underground racing scene. Gradually, he got Alessia involved in the scene as well. By the end of 2022, Alessia was racing one of Giorgio’s custom-built Fiat 500 Abarth and smoking the competition.

Tragedy struck, however, in February of 2023 when Giorgio was involved in a serious accident while racing. Giorgio and two others were killed in the accident, the other racer was paralyzed from the waist down, and both public and private property was damaged. Alessia’s life was once again turned upside down as a result. Face still raw from the near-constant stream of tears flowing down her face, she found herself unemployed and on the street once more. As slowly as she had built a happy life with Giorgio, everything seemed to collapse in little more than a moment. She had chosen to sit the race out, and instead chose to watch from the sidelines— she should have been with him but instead watched her boyfriend die from the sidelines, completely powerless to intervene.

With the last cash in her pocket, she bought a gun from of a known dealer, walked up to a hill overlooking the Vinewood Hills, and waited for sunset so she could end her enduring misery. She calmed her nerves and wrapped her lips around the barrel, then pulled the trigger. Click, no gunshot. She melted into herself and realized what she had almost succeeded in, and she cursed and screamed and swore at the world for bringing her to the edge of her own undoing. What had brought her to such a degree of despair? Was she so ready to, at the ripe age of 23, go gentle into that good night? Or would she rage against the dying of the light? Gazing off into the sunset bathing the valley in a pink and orange hue, she said confidently, “Not today,” and headed back into the city that had unraveled her.

(( Images generated with Stable Diffusion XL, Realistic Vision v5.4, input prompt generated from ChatGPT 3.5 using list of key facial features. All such images are AI-generated; no real person is depicted. ))