In his midbrain, the neon message being transmitted to him slowly becomes clear, either through sound or some other inchoate telepathic means, and as the message jerkily comes into focus—a crude imperative clicking into place like tiles on a puzzle box—his fractured psyche begins to compute the deeper meaning of it.
The angry command currently being directed at him triggers a warning alarm that shatters his courage and weakens his resolve. All his defenses crumble. All the blockades in his brain—all the heavy-duty walls and partitions and compartments—come tumbling down … until he is nothing … nothing but a shattered human being groping in the dark, horrified, tiny, fetal … as the coded words are slowly decrypted in his mind:
WAKE UP, ASSHOLE!
The voice comes from inches away, a familiar breathy feminine voice.
“Wake up, asshole!”
He opens his encrusted eyes. Oh God, oh God, no-no-no—NO! A voice deep in his subconscious registers the horror and the true nature of his situation: He is tied to the walls of his own foul-smelling living room, which now serves as a perfect doppelganger for the torture chamber under the speedway in which he kept Michonne.
A single overhead safety lamp in a tin shade shines down on him. Michonne must have brought it in. The upper half of the Governor’s body is battered and bruised, torqued so severely by the ropes that his shoulders are nearly dislocated. The rest of him—which he now realizes with no small measure of horror is completely nude—rests with his legs bent at the knees and awkwardly splayed outward against a wooden panel hastily nailed to the carpet beneath him. His cock stings, stretched at an odd angle beneath him, as though glued to the floor in a puddle of coagulating blood. A strand of thick, viscous, bloody drool dangles off his lower lip.
The weak, mewling voice deep inside him pierces the noise in his head: I’m scared … oh God I’m scared—
—SHUT UP!
He tries to push back the voice. His mouth is as dry as a lime pit. He tastes bitter copper, as if he’s been sucking on pennies. His head weighs a thousand pounds. He blinks and blinks, trying to focus on the shadowy face right in front of him.
Gradually, in bleary, miragelike waves, the narrow face of a dark-skinned woman comes into focus—she crouches right in front of him, only inches away—burning her gaze into him. “Finally!” she says with an intensity that makes him jerk backward with a start. “I thought you were never going to wake up.”
Dressed in her dungarees and headband and braids and boots, she rests her arms on her haunches directly in front of him like a repairwoman inspecting a faulty appliance. How the fuck did she do this? Why didn’t anyone see this bitch skulking around his place? Where the fuck are Gabe and Bruce? Where the fuck is Penny? He tries to maintain eye contact with the woman but has trouble keeping his half-ton head aloft. He wants to close his eyes and go to sleep. His head droops, and he hears that awful voice.
“You passed out a second time when I nailed your prick to the board you’re on. You remember that?” She tilts her head curiously at him. “No? Memory a little messed up? You with me?”
The Governor starts to hyperventilate, his heart kicking in his chest. He senses his inner voice—usually buried deep within the remotest cavities of his brain—bubbling to the surface and taking over and dominating his stream of consciousness: Oh God I’m so scared … I’m scared … what have I done? This is God paying me back. I never should have done those things I did … to this woman … to the others … to Penny … I’m so damn scared … I can’t breathe … I don’t want to die … please God I don’t want to die please don’t make me die I don’t want to die oh God-oh-God—
—SHUT THE FUCK UP!!—
Philip Blake silently howls at the voice in his head, the voice of Brian Blake—his weaker, softer self—as he stiffens and cringes against the ropes. A sharp dagger of pain knifes up his midsection from the mutilated penis, and he lets out an inaudible gasp behind the tape clamped over his mouth.
“Whoa there, cowboy!” The woman smiles at him. “I wouldn’t do much moving if I were you.”
The Governor lets his head droop, and closes his eyes, and lets out a thin breath through his nostrils. The gag holds tight on his mouth, a four-by-four-inch hank of duct tape. He tries to moan but he can’t even do that—his vocal cords strangled by the pain and the war going on inside him.
The “Brian” part of him is pushing its way back up through the layers … until it insinuates itself again in the Governor’s forebrain: God please … please … I did bad things I know I know but I don’t deserve this … I don’t want to die like this … I don’t want to die like an animal … in this dark place … I’m so scared I don’t want to die … please … I beg you … have mercy … I will plead with this woman … I will plead for my life for mercy for my life please please-please-please-please-please-please-OH-GOD-please-GOD-please—
Philip Blake winces, his body convulsing, the rope digging into his wrists.
“Easy there, sport,” the woman says to him, her glistening brown face almost sanguine in the shifting light of the gently swaying lamp. “I don’t want you to pass out again before I get a chance to begin.”
Eyes slamming shut, lungs erupting with fire, the Governor tamps down the voice, swallows it back, shoves it back into the dark convolutions of his brain. He silently roars at his other self: STOP YOUR FUCKING WHINING YOU LITTLE WEAK-WILLED FUCKING BABY AND LISTEN TO ME, LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN—YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BEG AND YOU’RE NOT GOING TO FUCKING CRY LIKE A LITTLE FUCKING BABY YOU LITTLE BABY!!!
The woman interrupts the clamor: “Calm down for a second … and stop jerking around … and listen to me. You don’t have to worry about the little girl—”
Philip Blake’s eyes pop open at the mention of Penny, and he looks at the woman.