You Should've Kept Driving

by M.A. Savino

“So, she’s tough; breaking her will take more work.” Griffin shrugs his shoulders. Break me? That’s comical. I’ve been broken since birth.

His blade knicks my abdomen as he cuts away my blouse. He smudges the crimson liquid, stares at it for a brief second, and sucks it off his finger. A man after my own heart.

He snatches the scissors from beside me and presses them against my throat. “You think you’re funny?” I raise my eyebrows and nod. I’m fucking hysterical.

When boys show violent behaviors and tendencies, it’s brushed off as boys being boys. But when it’s a girl, oh, the horror. She needs help—counseling, medications, an exorcism, Jesus, something.

“I know what you’re thinking.” I tilt my head and study her paling face. “Why now? Why didn’t I kill you at breakfast? Because no one's last meal should be breakfast, Jenny, and timing is everything.”

I am a monster in the eyes of the law and civilized society. Perhaps if they were kinder to me, I wouldn’t have turned out the way I did. Nah. I like who I am—who I’ve become, what I am that they aren’t. Free.

Using poison is for the weak who don’t want to get their hands dirty. I like the hard, rough, messy, up close, and personal way with lots of blood.

Oh-oh, here she comes. Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up. Ooh, here she comes. She’s a maneater.

Griffin and Benny created us—me, people like me, and like them. Some say it’s nature versus nurture, but I say it’s both. We are naturally born with the propensity for violence, but society and family nurture and choose how we use it or if we use it.

I paint a perfect heart on his cheek with his brother's blood. “This is your doing, Griffin,” I say calmly, looking deep into his eyes so he can know the truth of it. “When you killed her, you unleashed me on the world. In a way, I am your creation, and you are my origin story.”

“I am a plague with no cure, a virus with no vaccine—a deadly army of one. And you…” I point at him. “…you killed the only thing preventing me from ravishing this world. You freed me, Griffin. And for that, I thank you.”