Inferno

chapter-1

Dante

Waking up can be really harsh, especially when you are an insomniac half your life which meant treasuring the little sleep you manage to get. This tiny fact was the reason for crankiest version of me every morning. Looks like today isn't any different either.

Still feeling groggy yet uncharacteristically active, I tried to reach for my phone with eyes half closed, which soon opened wide as my hand found an empty space in place of my night table.

I blinked, closed my eyes and blinked again as streaks of light from above kept blinding me. Rubbing my eyes slowly, I pried them open. With blurriness fading and background crisper I tried to make out my surroundings.

Finding myself in an unfamiliar surrounding made the residual sleep vanish in a blink. Reflexively, my hand moved towards my pillow to retrieve the gun which always rests under it only to find nothing there making me bolt up into sitting position.

After few moments of heart racing to reach my throat and blood pounding in my ears, I managed to relax myself enough to survey my surroundings.

I've been in enough situations where I found myself in a unacquainted surroundings. Sometimes in enemy's compounds, often with overly excited women after drunk one-night stands.

Whatever may be the situation, my presence of mind and an ability to respond even at gunpoint brought me out of all those situations alive.

Hopefully, this won't be any different either. All I had to do was, find out where on earth I am.

Letting my eyes wander around and focusing my ears enough to hear even the faintest of sounds, I planned on making a mental map of this place to find a possible escape route but soon, all my coolness went down the drain as I found my surroundings weird as fuck.

There were no walls around me. I was on open land or wait...
Holy mother of Jesus! There is no land. There is no floor nor a roof and worst... there is no bed under me either.
I am lying there, floating in air without any support in between acres and acres of open... space?

A space with sunless sky marking the roof and a vast ocean of nothing but fumes without watervapour curling and eddying to form a silvery-white luminescence giving a false appearance of floor.

Is this some kind of sick joke? If it is, then I hope whoever is playing it run away as far as possible before I could get my hands on him.

Or wait, may be its not. I think I was in similar place earlier. That one time when I was 16-year-old stupid kid, eager to try all the drugs available out there and one of the fools made me try LSD. I spent almost whole day hallucinating all sorts of messed up shit that even after coming out of its clutches; I had to spend another few hours debating what was true and what wasn't.

However, that happened 10 years back when I was nothing but a stupid kid who had been an easiest target for every sort of prank those sick bastards wanted to play.

Now, no one on this earth could even dare to stand in 10 feet radius of mine. It's shocking that some twat was stupid enough to spook my drink. Well then, wait until I get my hands on you little guy.

There is something clearly bothering me though. No drug spares your nervous system. If I was under a drug influence, there's no way I could think this straight.

Whatever may be the reason, looks like there is nothing I could do until this drugged haze leaves my head. So deciding to enjoy the high while it lasts, I lied back, trying to drink from the feedback of my memories.

I remember going to Carter's hideout with 10 of my best men only to find out that we were trapped. We were too lost in wiping out his territory that we forgot to be careful. Even then, we managed to succeed in our mission.