Page 111 of Savagely Yours
“That makes no sense.”
“I thought we were the same,” he continued. “Unlike many of our colleagues, I didn’t have family money or a family name to get by on. So, I used my looks?—”
“But you’re not attractive.”
“—and my charm. Good lord, do you have zero filter?” The paths in his hair morphed into a fistful of strands and frustration. “In my circles, I’m above average.”
I shrugged. “To each their own, I guess.”
“And that was part of the problem,” he said, voice hardening. “You’re smart, knowledgeable, passionate,andpretty. You didn’t ‘get by.’ You worked for it, and it made me face some difficult shit, like how I was drowning. How often I felt like I was in over my head. I got really good at using politician-speak to avoid showing my cards, never answering questions directly, and talking in circles. I’d built my life around always having an answer, even if it wasn’t an actual answer, and there you were, answering questions. Knowing things. Never a hair out of place or a loose thread. Always poised.”
“I had no choice,” I hissed.
“Neither did I!”
“Yes, you did. You got to where you were as a subjectively handsome idiot who bullshitted his way through answers. Doyou think anyone would take me seriously if I did the same? I was good at what I did, and I still had to listen to people whispering about whose dick I had to have sucked to get where I was.”
“But you made me face a truth I wasn’t ready to face,” he continued to argue. “That I was a fake. My big words were empty. My knowledge? Rudimentary, at best. You were what I was pretending to be, and when you showed up, that became obvious. I started to admire you. I was attracted to you in a weird, respectful kind of way.”
“You think being attracted to a woman out of respect and not sex is weird?”
“You’re turning my words around.”
“Or, they make no sense. Maybe it’s not only your legal knowledge that’s ‘rudimentary.’ I think it could also be your command of the English language.”
I waited for him to lunge.
Unlike Dez, I’d never killed before, so I needed a reason, an excuse—an indisputable act of self-defense. Instead, he sighed again, his shoulders falling, making himself smaller.
“Let me get this straight.” I shined the light directly into his eyes, forcing him to take several steps backward. “You hated me because I put in the work to get where I was, and you…didn’t?”
“No, I admired your work ethic,” he clarified. “My feelings for you changed when you didn’t accept my charm. When you didn’t fold like I was used to people folding. It made me want to destroy you.”
“Because I might one day see through you.”
“I understand that now. I didn’t understand that then.”
“And yet, you claim you didn’t bring me here.”
“I didn’t. The drones were deployed to force people toward the trains. I didn’t know you were here until I saw the Sanitation roster, and you don’t have a common name. I knew it was you.”
“Why’d you want me to suffer in a place where suffering was already present?” I asked.
“Because it put you at the bottom of the bottom,” he said. “You were so low that you could never be more than me, in any regard.”
I rolled my eyes. “So, instead of therapy, you decided to kill people.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Your actions led to numerous deaths, whether through making medicine and adequate care hard to get or killing dissenters.”
“We have to ration medicine.”
“Antibiotics? You couldn’t spare a round of antibiotics to knock out a simple case of strep?”
“I didn’t know you were sick until Dez brought you to Woodhaven. We knew Lin was treating you. We knew where you were. If I wanted you dead, I could have had you killed then.”
It was bullshit.
