Let me tell you a story about The Driver who Didn't Scream

This flash fiction walks the line between narrative and poetry. Told in verse, it immerses us in the aftermath of a crash and a brutal police encounter through one survivor’s fragmented memory.

They dragged me out of the wreck like I wasn’t human—just something wrecked.
Red and blue lights spun like carnival sin, a carousel built to make you sick.
I didn’t remember the crash.
Just the weight of hands.
My left leg howling sideways.
The copper sting of adrenaline thick in my throat.

“Refuse again and you’re resisting.”

I had refused.

Not because I thought I’d pass—God, no.
But because they wanted it too badly.
Wanted the machine to confess what I couldn’t remember.
Wanted the breath to seal it, stamp it, archive the guilt.

I wouldn’t let them have it.

So I swallowed the pain. Bit it down like glass.
My leg had folded under itself—dislocated, maybe shattered.
But I wouldn’t scream. Wouldn’t even grunt.

They slammed me against the hood.
Cold metal hissed under my ribs.
One braced his forearm on my neck, grinding vertebrae like chalk.
The other punched the breathalyzer kit out of my hand.
I think I laughed—once.

That’s when the fists came.
I didn’t block. Didn’t beg.
Just stared at the road.

The cracks in the asphalt looked like veins—black and splitting.
And I thought: That’s me. The road doesn’t ask why it gets driven over.

I blacked out somewhere between “stop resisting” and the second rib.

Woke in the back of the cruiser.
Hands cuffed. Leg crumpled.
My face pulsing to a heartbeat I didn’t recognize.
Outside, the trees spun backward—like time reversing, too slow to matter.

“You killed her,” one of them muttered. “Just so you know.”

I didn’t ask who.
My mouth was full of rust.
My eyes full of light too bright to touch.

Something cracked inside me. Not a bone—something deeper.

I saw her shoe first.
Red heel. Small. Alone.
It didn’t belong to me.
Or maybe it did.
Time was peeling.

“I said blow. Now.”

They jammed the breathalyzer into my face.
But I couldn’t remember how to breathe.

When the first baton cracked my ribs, I laughed.
I don’t know why.
Maybe it was the shame.
Maybe it was the taste of her name rising in my throat
and getting choked out by blood.

“Refusing the test, huh? That’s a charge too.”

I gritted my teeth. Swallowed the scream.
Not for them.
For me.

Because the pain was mine.
Because if I cried, they’d think I was afraid.
If I begged, they’d think I didn’t deserve to live.

And I did.
That was the worst part.

I was the one who lived.

Not her.
Not the girl in red heels who offered to drive.
Who smiled even when I slurred the same story twice.
Not the girl whose hand might’ve been on the gearshift when we swerved.

Or was it mine?

I couldn’t remember if I told her I loved her.
Or if I was too busy pretending I was sober.

All I knew was her seat didn’t scream.
And now it never would.

By the time they zip-tied my wrists, the pain had turned inside-out.
My leg dragged like guilt on a leash.

I wanted them to break something that wouldn’t heal.
But I wouldn’t give them the sound.

I held the scream in my lungs
like a breathalyzer I’d never blow into—
because the numbers didn’t matter.

The truth was heavier than any blood alcohol level.

The truth was:

I killed someone I loved
before I remembered what her laugh sounded like.

So I bled.
So I limped.
So I swallowed silence like communion
and let them call me monster.

It was the first thing they got right.

© Cassian Delmare