All of it stops— everything. I can hear nothing, even the sound of my own heartbeat is silent. It keeps me from breathing properly, the situation at hand, and all the air within my lungs is taken away.
It's surreal, or at least it feels that way; it has to be.
The blood on my cheek soaks into my skin, hisblood; and this feeling, somehow, got rid of the aching pain of some man drilling hisknee deep into my back. His dismembered and disfigured body is spread across the gravel, the tiny rocks and dust particles drowning beneath the stream of blood and chunks rolling out from what was his head.
I blink, finally releasing a weighty breath. "I.."
"What?" I glare at the ground, listening to the sound of his voice in hatred. "Was the joke that bad?"
"I'm gonna kill you." Rick tells my father in an unstable, shaky voice.
Negan pauses, standing and staring in pleasure and slight shock, before approaching Rick and kneeling in front of him. "What? I didn't quite catch that." Lowering the bloody bat, he leans closer and says to Rick, "You're gonna have to speak up."
Rick sniffles while dropping his head, raising it again to lock eyes with Negan. "Not today.. not tomorrow.. but I'm gonna kill you."
Negan looks him up and down, kissing his lips before letting out an airy laugh. "Jesus. Simon, what did he have.. a knife?"
"Uh.. he had a hatchet." Simon, his right-hand man, answers.
"A hatchet?" He looks over Rick's shoulder in amusement, smiling when Simon answers him again.
"He had an ax."
"Heh... Simon's my right-hand man." His eyes find and search through Rick's again. "Having one of those is important." Negan was teasing him, throwing the horrid death of his friend in his face— my face, too. "I mean, what do you have left without them...? A whole lot of work. Do you have one?"
Rick keeps quiet, narrowing his darkened eyes at the murderer in front of him.
Negan narrowed his eyes. "Maybe one of these fine people still breathing? Oh.. Or did I..?" He raises his bleeding bat and swings it in his face, clicking his tongue playfully.
