New Story Attempt (2)

An old acquaintance who claimed he had been to the gates of hell spoke of darkness. That very same acquaintance swore blind on his children, parents, dead relatives and everything good in the universe, that his deceased mother had grabbed him by the foot and pulled him out before they'd locked the gates.

Marcus had been waiting for his mother's hands to grab his foot as well, pull him out of hell, back up to the world of the living so he might get a second chance at living right. 

Not that deserved one, everything considered, but even a killer and a thief deserved the mercy to take stock of their own misdeeds, the privilege to at least try to repent.

Was it wrong of him to hope that not all was lost? 

Does the afterlife judge the purity of one's soul or merely the actions committed on earth? Does the afterlife care that you died because you'd chosen to believe you had no control over your situation? Is the afterlife going to forgive someone who believed his time was running out so there was no reason to spend it any longer with a woman he once swore he would never let go of.

Is the afterlife going to have any sympathy on him after what he had done, especially as a last, vindictive act? Was he not the perfect picture of what he had always been?

An absolute asshole.

At least, this absolute asshole managed to end things his own way.

With style.

Flying like a bird.

Right into the fucking dirt.

He wondered if Ashley would see how much cooler he was than that Bill guy now. 

Smacking a bottle on some dude's head? Stealing a poor woman's car and driving it out of the highway and into the abyss? Marcus fucking Hale, ladies and gents! The godliest of Gods, and the finest piece of asshole known in man and his unicorns combined.

Marcus might've not gotten the kind of fame he wanted, but having his name on headlines wasn't half-bad.

Besides, doesn't the fairer sex love serial killers and their dark mystique? 

Ah, Ashley…

It was true when they said: we know not what is good until we have lost it. 

It’s crazy how much it hits home when you realize you have nothing left to lose.

When you're on the losing end of your own life, you quickly discover all the reasons you had to get up and face every damn morning with a smile on your face. You begin to wonder, maybe you did not know how to treasure those simple things and that you wasted it on being sad, frustrated and unfulfilled.

But then, thinking about what your loved one had said and the things they'd given you made it hard not to believe. Maybe the way life had treated you thus far was good, all things considered.

There was never an easy road, but maybe in hindsight, one could say life was good.

Kind of.

'Don’t ask for more.' A memory said.

'Things will get better.' It said, like his mother would when Marcus was young and sad because daddy had broken his favorite toy—the only one he had, actually. 

His time had simply run out.

This is just another episode.

It had become unbearable to endure.

Maybe he wasn’t brave.

Maybe it was him being a coward and scared. Scared of dying and lonely. 

He wished he could’ve given Ashley a better life, though.

Seriously.  

Darkness was all encompassing, yet he felt like he'd been laying there forever, like time did not pass while one remained there, buried beneath the ground, dying. He wondered if all would turn out okay, after the fall, after the suffocation, the loneliness, the weight. If he really did die and nothing remained.

Then a flicker of something.

He frowned.

The flicker turned into a blob of light, drifting from right to left before him in no clear, linear direction, flickering out a shape and vanishing within that shape before reappearing in another spot.

Another light popped right into existence beside the first one.

Baffling.

They began to multiply. He marveled at their presence, mesmerized, as the two flickered furthest out into a larger, more luminous form.

It was odd... and for some reason, familiar.

Still, this hell smelled like trash. So much so that his eyes were watering, and his left cheek was hurting so bad—

Marcus’ eyes snapped wide open, a gasp wrenching his mouth wide open. A burst of light. An overpowering stench that'd have turned his insides had it not been so empty. A foul, cacophonous racket, pierced by the thin wailing of a child. 

What the actual fuck.

He wasn't in hell. This wasn't heaven. But there was a devil right there, whose spittle rained like water upon him and an odor whose stink defied logic, and whose ugliness redefined the word. "Ye little thief, thinkin' of robbin' me?! Me?!"

Marcus was briefly afloat, and by the time his dizzy world rattled back into a semblance of focus, he found himself lifted high by the devil, a big, toothless grin marring the old man's face. It made Marcus forget his pains. He would've laughed at the comical sight if it weren't for his situation.

He was being lifted by the collar for the second fucking time. Was he really that easy a target? He wondered.

'Why is there even a devil here, though. Isn't this Earth?'

The devil threw him into a garbage dumpster so hard his ass broke the mounds of rotting food, sending everything bouncing into a funky, pungent mess. Marcus could only cough as he inhaled the shit and gasped for breath .

The devil's hairy face hovered like a deranged bat high above the opening.

"Shoulda pegged you for a lowlife thievin' thief with nothin' but garbage on yer mind. Say, what kind o' fuckin' idiot steals from Woody, huh?! There's somethin' seriously fucked with ya. Ain't nuthin' more of a criminal scumbag than ya. A piece o' shit rotten bastard of a street rat who not even a dog'd bother layin' his mouth on!"

Marcus finally got his senses to work. Somewhat. 

Woody? Street rat?

The fuck?

Didn't the devil already have a bad rap for calling itself 'Satan', why resort to using a dumbass name like Woody on Earth of all places?

Marcus didn't have the courtesy of pondering too much upon a stupid moniker, not after he'd actually gone through death and then found himself coming close to it once again as Woody's cane slapped down onto his face with a vengeance.

His skull. His ribs. Arms and legs. His hip. Even his fingers were targeted, each strike wreaked pain that left him helpless to react, let alone escape. 

The strikes fell like a hammer, leaving the taste of copper in his throat. It was an unbelievable sort of agony Marcus had never experienced before. Not even when his father hit him as a kid.

"Thievin' sonova bitch..."

With those last parting words, Woody clicked his tongue in disgust, turned around the alley and disappeared into the main road.

For a long time, Marcus stayed inside the dumpster, quietly catching his breath, and wincing every time he did so. 

What the hell had just happened?

For some reason, this hurt far more than death. At least, a physical pain he could experience. 

Damn, hadn’t he died? Or at least been close enough to it that no modern medicine could possibly have saved him. Was there still some damage lingering in his brain from the fall that had him hallucinating the whole thing? Heck, maybe he had never died, and the entire dream had been one intense acid trip.

There is no such thing as hell or heavens or devils or whatever.

The guy just looked like an asshole on some drugs that Marcus had unwittingly stolen from. It would explain that stupid accent and the hobo hair. 

If he hadn’t died, he really felt like he was about to now. The man had beaten him black and blue, with possibly some broken bones. 

He just hoped the law caught up and executed Woody too so he could pass on knowing karma got that fucker in the end.

Marcus sighed as he writhed between the trash, the wet bags had burst open upon impact. It cushioned the fall, avoiding more serious injuries, but the tradeoff was that he smelled like a garbage truck. 

“Ugh…”

On top of the strange old man, something was missing.

Not missing. It was like the person that had been Marcus Hale, a 37 year old conglomerate clog and failed dreamer, was incomplete, in some way. 

When he attempted to stand up, it wasn’t the pangs of pain that surprised him, but the height he perceived the world from had significantly lowered. He rubbed his hand, as if trying to wake himself. Perhaps the dumpster was just messing with his sense of height, his hand was so small, the proportions made no sense.

Marcus held his head as he staggered out of the back alley, hoping to drag himself to the nearest hospital. He didn't even care whether he was supposed to be an outlaw or not; someone had beaten the shit out of him, he ought to report that to the police station too.

Who said a criminal couldn’t report another criminal? It was the law of survival, here. 

With a hand on the dirty wall, he trudged forward. 

It wasn't until he was out of the back alley and into the main street that Marcus somehow forgot all about pain, about calling an ambulance and even about the guy Woody.

He drank it all in, his mouth hanging wide open. 

Old fashioned buildings with outlandish names. 

Townsfolk walking around in a mix of clothing Marcus didn't remember seeing anywhere in recent history, or probably just him forgetting shit he saw on the internet, which was what seemed more likely.

Then there was that huge-ass castle in the distance.

Marcus stared, dumbfounded, at the sight before him. A city plucked right out of a fantasy novel, with cobblestone streets, horse-drawn carts, and people bustling about in strange, medieval-looking garb.

A woman with a pointed hat and a broom swept the stoop of a shop with a sign that read ‘Enchanted Elixirs & Potions’. A burly blacksmith hammered away at a glowing piece of metal, sending sparks flying. A group of armored knights marched past, their armor gleaming in the sunlight.

He looked to the right. Two men had simultaneously drawn their swords. A serious fight was about to break out.

He looked to the left. A ridiculous sight greeted his eyes. A party of four people. One man, awkwardly stumbling behind three gorgeous girls. One of them had furry ears. The other was a goth-looking chick. The last one, a girl with golden hair who walked with a graceful poise.

He saw more folks with animal-like features, some with tails, some with weirdly shaped ears. All of them in this place.

He saw a guy in a robe, carrying a glowing staff that seemed to hum with an otherworldly energy. He saw a woman with a bow slung over her shoulder, a quiver of arrows on her back. He saw a short, stout figure with a long beard and a helmet, axes dangling from his belt.

All kinds of people.

Then Marcus felt the intense urge to take a shit.

No, wait.

Marcus rushed over to the front of a shop where he could see his reflection in the glass. The person who stared back at him wasn't a thirty seven-year-old, washed up Marcus Hale.

It was a scrawny little boy. A kid who looked no older than twelve, with big, expressive red eyes, and a mop of messy, dark hair. His face was swollen, smudged with dirt and blood. His clothes were little more than rags, torn and patched in a dozen places.

He looked like a street urchin. A kid who had been living on the streets for who knows how long. He was dirty. He was thin. He was hungry.

And he was unapologetically alive.