Guilt is a strange thing, Adrian decides.
A somewhat unknown sensation throughout his life, he had always found it hard to comprehend such a sensation until that fateful winter night 5 years ago. His stomach lurches and his palms and brow perspire in unison. Heartbeat is steadlily raised with every moment he thinks about what happened in depth. He begins to understand how truly unbearable the rest of his existence is going to be.
Sometimes he genuinely believes he deserves it, somedays he just wants to lay in those satin sheets, foetal postion, sobbing and shaking in what he tells himself is a self indulgent terror. Fear of his own conscience.
Even on a good day the nightmares never stop.
Adrian finds himself in the same room as always. There's no goddamn light in this room at all, and his wrists are twisted backward in a brutal fashion against a cold iron pipe. The room is black. For what he believes is the first time in his life, the 'invincible' man is starting to feel that long lost sensaton of panic and fear as the door opens, illuminating the otherwise pitch black surroundngs wth an eery, blue-green light. Adrian looks up.
Emerging from the light, a burly figure makes his way towards him, however out of place it may seem, this figure appears so cheerful that Adrian simply can't help but feel un-nerved.
It's Eddie Blake, Adrian wants to believe. His face is painted theatrically, monochrome colours decorating haggered facial features. The gash on his face from the mother of his deceased child is filled in with white, the split on his forehead from his abrupt collision with the paving stones is filled in with a theatrical ruby red, as if to ironically parody the event. Adrian notes Blake's eyes, how they roll back into his skull just a little too far. He is sure Blake is no more alive than he was at the end of that fateful night.
"You really fucked me up Ozy, I have to give it to you. I really didn't think you had it in you."
Blake grins, painted black lips seperating to reveal bloody, broken teeth.
"But then again, I always thought you were a sneaky little bitch."
Adrian can't stand to look below the neck of his victim, who's limbs seem to remain as contorted as they had the night of his death, upon impact with concrete.
"I guess you feel like you don't deserve this, hey Ozy? You deserve happiness as much as anyone else, right? You're such a good person after all." Blake smirks, pulling out the knife.
Adrian shudders, some part of him is aware he is inbetween every day consciousness and a self-contained hell, although for the most part he is convinced he is simply in a genuine limbo, as Blake raises the knife.
"Eddie...please." Adrian whispers, weakly. He knows it's no good really, but who would allow themselves to be cut open without the slightest hint of protest?
Adrian feels the pain, he feels every laceration and incision, hears his own reluctant screams of horror, eventually declining into shreiks of pain, he feels everything he'd ever feared and yet even when Blake takes away his last limb he still feels as if justice has being fulfilled.
An hour later, Adrian Veidt wakes in a cold sweat, his face damp with tears and sweat, the room seems to have an eery buzz as he finally comes round to accepting it was simply a dream, a mere figment of hs imaginaton. So why ths anticipation? Why this fear of somethng yet to come? Adrian tells himself to calm down as he pushes back sticky blonde locks of hair away from his forehead.
The dreams resume as soon as his eyes are shut, this time Adrian finds himself half heartedly protesting his innocence at the gates of a would-be hell, he notes how closely the doorman resembles Jon. Adrian can't lie to this man. He knows this.
"I don't deserve to burn in hell!"
Adrian tries to convince himself as the floor beneath him gives way, the moans and roars of the pits beneath beckoning him to join. Terror grips him as he watches Jon's unchanging expression disappear and the temperature rise.
Adrian wakes once more in a cold sweat, he's shaking and his breathing has become shallow. He soon comes to realise that he is already as damned as those moaning souls within his dreams, as pained as he was when chained to that cold iron pipe, and just as eternally alone as he was when finally dragged away into an all too fitting hell.
He feels tears escape from his eyes, flowing against pale, hollow cheeks and soaking into embroided bedsheets.
The world will never know.