Philip’s scream—filtered behind the duct tape, almost to the point of sounding like a warbling car alarm—is constant now. Michonne pushes the spinning bit down to the hilt, the delicate mist of blood blowing back into her face. Philip lets out a feral moan—which sounds something like “MMMMMMMMMMMMMMGGGHHHHH!!!”—as the drill buzzes and whirs. Michonne finally lets up on the trigger and unceremoniously yanks the bit out of the pulp of Philip’s shoulder with a violent jerk.
The Governor shudders in agony between the two ropes that creak noisily with every twitch.
Michonne drops the drill on the floor with little concern for its well-being, cracking the housing. Tendrils of gristle and matter cling to its bit in a bloody tangle. Michonne gives it a nod.
“Okay,” she says, speaking more to herself than to her subject. “Let’s take care of that bleeding and make sure we keep you awake.”
She finds the roll of duct tape, snatches it up, pulls a strip clear, bites it off with her teeth, and wraps it around the bloody, wounded shoulder with very little tenderness. She would practice more care if she were dressing a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. She closes off the wound as though securing a leaky pipe.
Meanwhile, Philip Blake feels the curtain of darkness closing down over his line of vision. He feels the world separating like two panes of glass sliding apart underwater, forming a double image, which fades and fades, until his head lolls forward and the cold spreads through him, and he mercifully starts to pass out again.
The slap comes out of nowhere, hard and fast, to the side of his face. “WAKE UP!”
He heaves back against the ropes, eyes fluttering back open to the horrifying sight of the black woman’s steadfast, baleful expression. Still bearing the scars and the purple scourge marks of her own torture, the woman’s face furrows with contempt and fixes its unyielding glower on the Governor. Her smile is a clown’s grin of madness and hate. “The last thing you want to do is pass out again,” she says calmly, “you’ll miss all the fun.”
Next come the needle-nosed pliers. She procures them from the duffel, and comes back whistling that maddening tune that makes the Governor’s flesh crawl. It feels like a hive of wasps humming in his ears. He fixes his hot gaze on the pointed tips of those pliers as Michonne reaches down and grabs his right hand, which dangles loosely from its bound wrist. Whistling absently, she carefully holds his index finger up between her thumb and forefinger as though she’s about to give him a manicure.
It takes some effort, but she wrenches off his fingernail quickly, like ripping a Band-Aid off a sore. The searing pain corkscrews down his arm, strangles him, ignites his tendons with molten lava. His ferocious groan—suppressed by the gag of tape—sounds like a cow being slaughtered. She moves to the middle finger and tears off the nail. Blood drips and bubbles. Philip hyperventilates with agony. She does the third finger and then the pinkie for good measure.
“That hand is just ruined now,” she says as matter-of-factly as a manicurist offering grooming advice. She drops the pliers, turns, and searches for something across the room. “Just ruined,” she mutters, finding her sword.
She comes back and very swiftly—without hesitation—she winds up like a major league batter about to swing for the fence and brings the sword down hard and fast on the joint of his right arm just above the elbow.
The first sensation that smashes into Philip Blake—before the burning, unbearable pain—is a slackening of pressure as the rope tumbles away with the severed arm attached. His penis detaches from the board and blood fountains from the ragged stump as he falls sideways now, loosened from the east wall. He hits the floor hard, gaping at the remains of his right arm with uncomprehending horror—way down in the center of his eyes, in the pupils, in the cores of the irises, the apertures closing down to pinpricks that burn like diodes—and he lets out a grotesque sound behind the muzzle of duct tape that recalls a strangled pig.
The blood has bathed him by this point, making the wooden platform as slimy as an oil slick. Profound cold engulfs him, turning his flesh to ice.
“Don’t worry,” Michonne is saying to him, but he can hardly hear a thing she’s saying anymore. “I’m pretty sure I can stop the bleeding.” She pulls a Zippo from her pocket. “Where’s that torch?”
In the surreal passage of time before she comes back with the torch, lying on the floor in his own blood, the cold spreading through him, he senses the other voice way down in some far-flung cavity of his brain, sobbing and choking on its anguished plea: God please don’t let me die like this … please … save me … don’t let it end … not like this … I don’t want to die like—
ENOUGH!
ENOUGH!!
Deep down in the core of his soul, Philip Blake turns a corner, the revelation traveling up his spine and exploding in his brain.
In syrupy slow motion, Michonne approaches with the torch, lighting the nozzle with a WWWWHOOMP, but the sight of her no longer troubles him, no longer alarms him. She is fate on two legs and he finds his true character then. He watches her lowering the arcing flame toward his ragged stump of an elbow. He gazes at her with that one eye—peering through dangling strands of his greasy hair—and he has his greatest epiphany yet.
It’s time, he thinks, flinging his thoughts at her through the beacon of his feverish gaze. Go ahead. I’m ready. Get it over with. I dare you. Go ahead, bitch. I’m fucking ready to fucking die. So kill me … do it now … KILL ME! I’LL BET YOU DON’T HAVE THE FUCKING GUTS! GO AHEAD AND KILL ME NOW YOU FUCKING BITCH!!
She burns the stump with the blue flame, cauterizing blood and pulp and tissue, making horrible crackling noises in the silent living room, spuming smoke and sizzling marrow, and sending the worst pain through Philip he has ever experienced … ever.
Ever.
And unfortunately for Philip Blake—AKA the Governor—the process does not kill him.
And the woman named Michonne has only just begun to work on him.