Hell (pt. l)

I wrote this story a bit over a year ago, and it is one of my favorites. It's the longest piece I've ever completed. There are five chapters, a prologue and a short epilogue. I have now posted the entire story. (GG added: To reach each of the parts in order, open the story and click on the links on the bottom right of each piece.)

Prologue

I woke up to my alarm clock screaming at me. I knocked it off the small table next to my bed, which did little to shut it up. I slowly sat up, grabbed the clock off the floor and punched the “snooze” button. I stood up, brushed my brown hair out of my eyes and stumbled down the hall to the shower.

When I got out of the shower a few minutes later, slightly more awake, I walked to the refrigerator and grabbed a cup of coffee out. Cold coffee isn’t quite as good as hot coffee, but it was easier to deal with and faster to get in the morning. The rest of my breakfast consisted of a few pieces of bread with honey on them. Not too appetizing, but it kept me going until lunch. I looked up at the clock: seven-thirty; I had to leave for work soon.

Work. The downfall of my life.

When I was a kid, I had fantasies of being a writer or an actor, but four years of college and six years at a dead-end office job had put me in my right mind. I worked ten hours a day with clueless idiots on things that no one fully understood. I hadn’t been in a real relationship since high school and barely got paid enough to feed myself and my dog, Orsan, an old, decrepit beagle, who currently had parked himself right in the middle of the kitchen floor, where he couldn’t be more in the way.

I stepped over Orsan yet again to get my cell phone off the counter. I flipped it open and put it up to my ear to check for a dial tone.

Unfortunately, there happened to be no dial tone. I must’ve been late on goddamn bill again. I hurled the phone to the cheap wooden floor. Despite advertisements’ claims, it couldn’t handle being thrown on the floor with all my strength. It shattered like dropped icicle. My boss would have to figure out I was sick on his own. Orsan slowly lifted his head, blinked a few times, and yawned.

“What the hell do you want?!” I bellowed into his face. He blinked few more times and yawned again before nestling his head between his front paws once again. I finished my last piece of bread and honey before stomping over to the door.

I slipped my coat on and pulled a battered Red Sox cap down over my face. I wasn’t in the mood to be looked at. People often noted that I wore a long, tan coat reminiscent of 1930s detectives. They would say that it was “vintage” and “out of style” I would often reply by asking them how they could find hats that would fit their swollen heads.

I would also commonly run into people who disliked my wearing a Red Sox hat, as I lived on the outskirts of New York City, where most of the Yankees’ fan base came from. The truth is that I never really liked the Red Sox, or baseball in general for that matter. I just found the hat on the ground and figured it was better than paying for one, so I brought it home and washed it. I also think it’s funny watching these guys get pissed off. They taunt me for my hat, and I burn them on everything from their sex life to their children to their weight to whatever else I think of at the time. I don’t actually know any of these people, and if I do happen to know them, I pretend not to. I’m not so into the whole “making friends” thing. I never have been, even in kindergarten I played with blocks on my own, and attempted to castrate any unfortunate child who tried to befriend me. Even up through high school, I was always the one who stood alone and did homework while other guys were doing drugs and hanging in groups. I went to a huge college so I just got lost in the crowd, no one knew me, partially because I wasn’t social, and partially because my roommate, the only guy I might have befriended died of a drug overdose early in the first semester. And even up to this point, I never was part of a group in work. I only worked with people when I had to, doing my own thing most of the time. Hell, most of them were too dumb to even have intelligent conversation.

I stepped out of my apartment building, the wind nearly whipping my hat off my head. Some wet flakes of snow slapped my face. What had we done to the environment to make the weather like this? It was only November, and it was already as cold as late December. I held my small laptop under my arm, maybe I could get some internet access at the Starbucks across the street. The little light on the other side told me I shouldn’t walk, but I didn’t hear any cars coming, so I though it couldn’t hurt to just jog across. I was halfway across when the taxi hit me. The guy have been in a hell of a rush to get where he was going because his horn honk only gave me enough time to look at him and see the determined expression on his face.

The front bumper took my legs right out from under me and smashed my head into the windshield. The problem was that the bastard didn’t stop when he hit me, he just kept on going. After my head, my shoulder hit the windshield and I flipped sommersault-style onto the roof, then rolled over it and was spilled back onto the pavement. My head and right shoulder hit first together, followed by the rest of my body, and I rolled for a few yards before slowing to a halt as everything faded into darkness.

“He has a broken shoulder, ankle, femur, and his skull is fractured in seven places,” said an odd, distorted voice.

White light filled the small crack between my eyelids as I heard yelling all around. Someone was screaming. No. Not someone. Many people. All screaming. Someone was yelling out something about pulse, one small voice was asking about brains and I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it. I saw a single figure dressed in all white, except his shirt. It was mostly red. Thick red paint was smeared across his shirt. Why would someone like that be there? No. It wasn’t paint. It was blood. My eyes began to slide shut. It was my blood. My blood was smeared all over this person. Everything was drifting away.

“We’re losing him!” someone said, their voice laced with urgency. Then everything slipped into blackness again...