attention right now. I needed to push them aside and figure out what the fuck was going on.
My eyes snapped open and I drew in a ragged breath as I squinted at my surroundings, taking in the clear plastic sheeting I was lying on over the cold, stone floor. The light overhead was bright and blaring off of white tiled walls and I spotted a little seahorse decal etched into them. There were no seahorses in hell. Fact. Squids clearly resided with the Devil, but there weren’t any of them in sight. So I definitely wasn’t dead. In fact, it looked like I was in a blandly decorated bathroom.
A man was humming along to the music which came from a portable speaker balanced on the toilet and I turned my head slowly just as he tipped a large blue barrel of liquid into the bathtub, his back to me as he worked. I narrowed my eyes at another barrel which lay on its side by his feet, reading the label and gritting my teeth as I realised this motherfucker was pouring me an acid bath.
Well fuck him. I didn't work this damn hard to paint my flesh in ink just to have it all dissolved in a fucking tub of sulphuric acid like some half rate gangster failure.
I rolled onto my side, sucking in a sharp breath as the pain of my bullet wound daggered into me like a pure shot of hellfire. Luckily, Blink-182 were loud enough to drown out the sound of me pushing up onto my hands and knees as I grunted against the pain in my flesh.
The asshole turned slightly and I stilled, waiting for him to see me, come at me, try and fucking finish me - but he didn't. He just leaned over to pour the last drops from his barrel of acid and offered a view of his profile for me. Which was all I needed to recognise the motherfucker who had laid his hands on my girl and fill me with a blinding need for vengeance.
I shoved to my feet, a furious snarl escaping me as I almost blacked out from the pain in my body, but I refused to let that stop me.
The asshole turned with a shout of alarm, grabbing a gun from his belt half a second before I collided with him.
My weight sent him crashing back into the wall beside the bathtub and I snatched the wrist of the hand holding his gun, slamming it back against the tiles with a furious roar.
He threw a punch straight into my side, agony tearing into me as he hit my bullet wound and stars burst to life before my eyes as darkness curtained my vision. Oblivion called for me and I told it to get fucked, throwing my forehead forward and smashing his nose, causing blood to splatter my face.
I drove a punch into his gut and slammed his wrist against the tiles again, forcing him to drop the gun which skidded away across the plastic sheet.
I wrapped my other hand around his throat, but his fist crashed into my side again and again and the pain was so blinding that I somehow found myself falling, my ass hitting the edge of the tub as I almost fell backwards into it.
By some act of God, or the Devil, or just fucking luck, I managed to grab the edge of the tub, my boot slamming into his chest as he lunged at me and knocking him away from me again.
I lurched after him, blood splattering the plastic sheet as I leaked worse than a faulty tap, but that didn't matter right now. What mattered was finishing this before my body gave up and I ended up taking a bath I'd never be getting out of.
I shoved myself away from the tub, coughing as the acidic scent caught in my throat and grabbing something from the top of the toilet to smash his head in with. Unfortunately, it was a fucking roll of toilet paper which just bounced off of his face as he lunged at me with a goddamn hunting knife. Not just any knife either - that was my baby, and he was turning it on me like some two-timing whore.
I ducked aside as he swung the blade for my throat, the backs of my knees hitting the toilet and making me fall back to sit on the closed lid and knock the speaker flying.
I grabbed the toilet brush holder