Zandans Novel Taster: Dantes Infinitum

"Then will you please tell me what here's called?"Like a robot the joggers' demeanour goes blank.
"I just call it here." Dante grabs the jogger in a forceful headlock before throwing him against the car and leering angrily into his eyes. Dante's breathing becomes heavy and he begins to spit while talking.
"Are you trying to f*ck with me? Because if you are, I'm not finding it very funny." The jogger inexplicably trues to continue jogging on the spot while Dante forces him onto the car bonnet.
"No sir, I'm just out jogging, I'm really sorry for bumping into you." Smiles yet again. Dante gentlemanly helps the jogger back to his feet.
"You must be retarded. Do you even know where here is?" Dante sits himself on the car bonnet. For the first time real life and thought enter the soulless joggers body.
"No I don't believe I do, I just know that it's where I jog. Does it matter?" Dante erupts with frustration.
"Yes is does matter! I don't know what the f*cks happening to me. I woke up in a wrecked car in some weird alternate dimension, and the worst thing is I'm alone" Tears of fear and frustration begin to well in Dante's bloodshot eyes. "Their should have been someone in that car with me, I don't know who, but it's somebody I love, and they're not where they should be. What the f*ck happened to me?" The life force that fleetingly inhabited the jogger drains away, leaving him a very well decorated shell with automated responses.
"I don't know. Well I've really got to go." Dante's face gives way to a rye smile.
"From here to there I bet." Jogger gives another empty smile.
"Yes sir indeed." The jogger begins to jog on before turning around. "Oh you should be careful."
"Of what?" The jogger stops dead on the spot and a fake seriousness takes over him.
"Ruffians, they'll hurt you, they're mean."

“What the hell was that about?” Dante notices the woman’s knife stepping back into a defensive posture. “Thanks for saving me from a beating, now please don’t kill me.” The woman sheaves the knife and places her hands on her hips. “Silly Dante, I’m one of the few people around here who isn’t going to try and kill you.” Dante relaxes and slumps back down to the ground.
“Cool, than I guess we can be friends, or maybe lovers. Well not lovers right now, I’m very sore.”
Kneels her beautiful self to the ground and stares seductively at Dante with a hint of sweet innocence gleaming from her sexually domineering suit of promiscuous guilt. “ ante my little man wh*re, if I wanted you I’d just open my legs and summon you.” Dante checks out the woman’s tight and sexy body and submits all his contrived resistance. “Looking at you, you’re probably right. I know you, you were supposed to be in the passenger seat, I checked for you but you weren’t there.” The woman slides her knife over to Dante. “Not quite, but I know the person you were looking for well.”
“Who are you then?” Dante picks up the blood stained knife and sheaves it in his belt. “Thanks for the knife.”
“I’m Natalya, we kind of know each other through our mutual friend.” Natalya tilts her head and smiles. Dante tries in vain to recall even the face of this enigmatic loved one. “ Who is our mutual friend?”
“I don’t know either, we’ll know them when we see them.” Natalya breaks eye contact with Dante and climbs to her feet as he speaks. “It’s going like that for you too?”
“Yeah, it’s like all this should be a dream, a really vivid one at that, but I know it’s not.”
“I was in a car crash um apparently, what’s your excuse for the memory loss?” Natalya stands there silently, while Dante gesticulates to his surroundings.
“ o you know what the hell happened to this place?”
“ No, it’s weird ain’t it? This side of the street looks like its from a nice little village, the other side looks like a grotty council estate, the city looks like Escape from LA and the coliseum from Rome, what the hell is that doing here? Crazy! Well I guess we’ll just have to go on a merry adventure and find out why the whole worlds gone mad.” Natalya turns on her heels and like a ninja disappears into the grid after grid of houses. From the distance Natalya shouts her farewell.
“Wait a second, don’t go, don’t leave me here alone!” Dante realises that she’s long gone. “Why, just why do that? A penny finally drops and Dante realises the opposite side of the street is identical to the street he grew up on, except for some unknown reason his house is boarded up and seems to have been

While still on the floor he slashes both of the thugs Achilles tendons bringing her crashing to her knees, she roars with pain turning round to try and deliver her payload again, but Dante grabs the hand in which she’s wielding the mace and drives his knife through elbow severing it, Dante tares away the arm and discards it while holding onto the mace. Dante steps back away from her lifting the mace in the air celebrating it as his trophy. “I beat you fare and square, now take your gang pussies and don’t come back.” She kneels, blood shooting from her stump, in total silence, she then violently tries to jerk herself onto her feet but they just buckle time after time beneath her. “What’s a matter with you, you stupid girl, you’re beaten.” She crawls towards him with vicious intent. “I’ll really hurt you if I have to!” He fails to realise there is no reasoning with such a person. The thug halts her painfully slow charge to scream and moan in agony, she falls to her face drowsy from the blood loss. Dante steps towards her to check for signs of life before reconsidering and stepping back, and rightfully so as in an instant the thug springs to life and desperately drags herself towards Dante. The ruffians numbers begin to grow and encircle Dante glaring menacingly in his direction. His concentration compromised, he feels a horrible pain near his groin, the thug as latched onto his hip and sunk her teeth into his thigh, in a split second he decides that Dante junior must be saved at all cost and drives the mace deep into the thugs cranium causing it to implode causing her immediate death. As if a spell has been broken the ruffians step aside to let Dante leave, then once he is a small distance away it seems as if a curse has just been summoned upon the ruffians. Dante watches on in horror as the ruffians lose all cohesion and brotherhood, so much so that they begin to kill the weaker members and devour their flesh. Dante jogs himself away from the mass brawl so that he may watch from a distance. He looks on in morbid curiosity as the ruffians continue beating each other to death, fighting over the remains of the thug. The strongest ruffian drives the others back before kneeling down and thrusting his hand into the thugs broken eye socket pulling at the eye stretching out the optic nerve from its cove snapping it, with animalistic delight the ruffian stuffs the eye into his mouth and crunching down causing its inner fluids to seep from his lips, he quickly moves onto the thugs skull, tearing at the plates of shattered craning and clawing at the brain tissue. The rest of the ruffians lose patience and begin to ravish her remains, ripping open her stomach with their bare hands and feasting on her intestines. “The apocalypse, it has happened.” Dante turns away in abject disgust only to see a familiar figure in the distance, he approaches the figure and is able to identify it as his old best friend Ramon. The figure turns towards Dante and bellows out. “ Yo Dante mate!”
“Is that you Ramon?” Canters towards him.
“Of course it’s me, don’t you recognise your best mate?”
“How longs it been?”
“Longer than you might think Dante.” Dante stands himself next to Ramon.
“What are you doing here?” Ramon rolls his eyes.
“I live here, not all of us could afford to go off to America.”