Thank you for the views and reviews! I especially want to thank SpyVsTailor for plugging this story in her amazingly-awesome Graveyard Dirt & Salt. Go read it if you haven't already.
I was going to wait before doing something from a villain's POV, but let's be honest - everyone is a villain in TWD. And I have a penchant for villains (they have the best songs in Disney movies after all).
Hope you enjoy the update!
"Suddenly, uncontrolled, something is taking hold.
Suddenly, agony, filling me, killing me.
Suddenly, out of breath,
What is this, is this death?"
- First Transformation, Jekyll & Hyde The Musical
xxxxx
THE GOVERNOR
xxxxx
He can still feel his eye blinking.
The physical sensation of opening and closing, the soft brush of eyelashes on the upper crest of his cheek. Such delicate softness, completely at odds with the roughened hide of weathered skin. A gentle caress, soothing in its innocence. Comforting in its autonomy, the utter lack of effort.
But now it's gone.
And what before was completely free now becomes a trial. A fight against muscle-memory, against what every fiber of his being wants to do yet can't. Worse than any pain because there's nothing there. It's simply gone.
Simply empty.
xxxxx
He crosses the threshold of the apartment, grocery bag in one hand and car keys in the other. He's tired, having put in hours 40 through 52 in a cramped cubicle with bad lighting, surrounded by piles of spreadsheets. Accounts and figures. Succinct and organized representations of the wealth of others.
He's ready for the weekend. Ready to take a load off, to kick his feet up and watch the television. Do something completely pedestrian like watch football and drink a beer.
There's always too much to do.
Entering the kitchen he stops short of placing the grocery bag on the counter, he takes in the collective piles of strewn mail and take-out menus with distaste. He knows he's told her a thousand times that they have a drawer for menus.
He places the bag down and begins to move the papers to their respective areas when his gaze catches on the bright cover of a home and garden magazine. A new subscription she must have ordered, with the cover featured designer home. Typical in appearance, off-white picket fences and cartoon-green oak trees. Sprawling lawns and plastic patio furniture.
Textbook representations of happiness and comfort.
Of success.
xxxxx
The gauze stretches and expands, white spongey pores absorbing the gritty tan of his pallor. He pulls the roll taut with one hand, the other securing the edge of the medical tape to the square pad resting on the open wound.
The gaping hole.
The intensity is building, pressing in from all sides. He's pulling too tight, constricting too many blood vessels with the combination of Georgia heat and rising internal temperature. His skin reddens and darkens as the blood pools beneath the surface, suffocating his ears until all he can hear is the steady thrum of his heartbeat.
Calm, even beats.
Steady and controlled.
xxxxx
He made sure not to let her see his worry, the desperation that was slowly building between them as they sat at the dinner table, absentmindedly poking at bits of food that neither of them felt like eating.
She only asked once why he wanted this big production. Didn't think it was necessary to indulge in such elaboration, especially when they could neither afford nor justify it.
But he was firm. Family dinner was a must, and even though he could sense her unease, he sought comfort in the appearance of solidarity, of normalcy.
Of perfection.
xxxxx
He knows his eye isn't there anymore. Can see it plain as day in the half-cast candlelight and bounding shadows of blowing curtains in his apartment window.
His reflection in the mirror swirls with the wind, carried away by another sip of drink and rising fever. He'll surrender to the tide eventually, seek solace in delicious delirium.
But right now his temperature is rising. Fever bordering on panic, kept in check by surging anger. Of hate and encroaching madness.
It swims in his blood now, rising in this throat like so much bile. Heating his skin with the slow boil of a furnace, electric sparks prickling just under the surface. A fuse ready to blow at the slightest push.
But he takes a deep breath, and his reflection in the mirror looks calm. Looks like a man who is still in charge, who still has the confidence of an inside track.
Who knows what to do next.
Appearances are what's important.