Wipe The Slate Clean

By Breech Loader

Breech: I never could stand how Meg gets treated in the show and I know I'm not the only one. So when Meg finally snaps, everybody gets exactly what's coming to them. It's hardly a spoiler to say that this 'episode' contains a killing spree.

"Mom, why does nobody even pretend that I exist?"

"Dad, don't you even remember how old I am?"

"How am I supposed to get any attention around here?"

Meg Griffin looked at the cold metal object she held in her hands. Those had been the questions she had once asked. She was done with those questions now. Her family never noticed her; never gave a shit about what she'd done or what she was doing.

So that had made it all the easier to buy a shotgun licence, then a shotgun, and going to the shooting range four times a week. Then buy her passport, and plan her journey to Mexico. It was premeditated murder. Definitely. She'd given it a lot of thought and planning. Six months of serious planning.

Well, one person had noticed. Slightly. He was actually noticing her not being there. Oh, he didn't follow her; he was too goddamn self-absorbed to bother doing that, but he noticed.

And he called her by her name. And he'd remembered her 18th birthday. He hadn't actually bought her anything, but he'd at least commented on it, unlike anybody else.

That made her frown, wondering what to do about him. He usually only gave a shit about himself and his own, frequently hypocritical beliefs, and a martini, but Brian... Brian, the drunk, beat-up, stoned, self-absorbed prick that he usually was, had actually been acting as if she existed.

But she knew what she was going to do, and nothing, and nobody, was going to get in her way.

She headed downstairs.

Brian Griffin, family dog, sat in his room and shakily filled up his pint-glass with vodka. The bottle rattled on the edge of the glass as his hand shook slightly. Then he lit up a blunt. None of it made him feel any better, but most of it was out of habit anyway.

I'm a bastard, he thought. Okay, so he didn't believe in God. Which meant there was nothing to make him go to Hell. But suppose He did exist? Then very soon, Brian would be going to Hell to meet His counterpart.

My life is a worthless pile of shit, he thought. I don't even really believe the crap I'm always spewing at everybody. Well, right now he was so drunk and stoned that in less than half-an-hour he'd be spewing more than shit.

He reached into a desk drawer and, fumbling slightly from all the drink he'd consumed that evening, pulled out the metal device, and stared at it.

Guns. What amazing contraptions. The first device man had created for the sole function of killing. It could be used for nothing else. It had no other purpose. He felt a little sick knowing that.

He tried to think straight. Was there any reason not to do this? Peter, Lois, Stewie, Chris, and Meg, would any of them care? Was he just a dog to them? Did he matter at all? In the near-infinity of the universe, what did his dumb opinions change? They changed nothing, that's what.

Quahog listened to a speech or two of his, then went on its merry, stupid way just like it always did.

Peter never, ever stopped being stupid, no matter how many times Brian tried to get him to think sanely.

Lois would never, ever love him.

Chris barely noticed him.

And Stewie – well, the less said about a baby who dreamed about killing his own mother, the better. Once, Stewie had been Brian's friend. Then Brian had just... gone his own way. And that just led to him being alone.

He placed the handgun to his head, squeezed shut his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

The sound of the shot echoed through the house.

"Everybody on the couch!" Meg fired a shot into the ceiling as her family hesitated, then pointed the shotgun back at them sitting around the table. Some plaster floated down, "RIGHT NOW!" she screamed.

"Sweetie, what are you doing?" Lois asked her daughter, trying not to scream. She readied a kung-fu stance.

Meg pumped her shotgun, ejecting the empty shell and chambering a new one, and aimed at Lois, "Don't even think about it, Mom," she warned her mother softly, "I've been practicing with this baby for six months at the shooting range now. You'd be dead before you hit the floor."

"Oh, oh, blow her head off right now!" Stewie enthused.

"Since when did you know how to handle a gun?" Peter asked her.

"Since when did you give a shit about what I do?" Meg asked him, "On the couch. All four of you."

To her immense satisfaction, her family got up and walked into the living room, and sat on the couch, with her using the shotgun as a gentle guide all the way. Peter, Chris and Lois sat on the couch; Stewie sat on Lois' knee. Meg stood a few paces in front of them.

"Now, don't move," Meg warned them all, "There's one of me, and four of you. So that means I'm four times more likely to shoot one of you than one of you is to get to me before I fire, and who knows which one it will be?"

"Lois, oh I pick Lois!" Stewie grinned.

"Shut up, Stewie!" Meg aimed at him, "You're not the only one who can get some attention!"

"Don't hurt my babies!" Lois begged automatically, "Please, sugar-pops, kill me, but don't hurt Stewie or Chris!"

"Don't you worry about them, Lois," Meg smiled sardonically, "Not just yet. Now, I'm not going to tell you how many shells I've got for this gun, but I will tell you it's more than enough to kill everybody in this house. We're going to play a game..."

"Yay?" Chris asked, as the shotgun hovered for a moment over his head.

Meg took a step back, the gun still steady in her grip. She'd been practicing for this moment for months, and it had been all she could do not to act before she was ready, "The object of the game is to give me a damn good reason why I shouldn't kill you. The prize is not dying. And I'm going to give you all a tip – the answer is not, 'because I'm your father, mother, or brother'. Do you really think I'd be pointing a shotgun at you if I hadn't thought of that?"

"Brian isn't here," Lois pointed out, "This is... a real family occasion. He should be here-"

"Oh, and you want me to go look for him?" Meg laughed, "Or maybe you could go run to fetch him yourself? Brian's in his room, drunk off his head. I checked on him, even if you don't. I'll deal with him soon enough."

"Honey, maybe you should give me the gun?" Peter asked her.

"Dad... do you really think I'm as stupid as you?" Meg asked, "Just for that, Peter, Daddy, the man who used my money to buy a tank, you're up first. Why shouldn't I kill you?"

"Because I'm your dad?" Peter suggested stupidly the very answer she had told him wouldn't work.

The shotgun blast blew his head right off, and splattered blood and brains all over the back of the couch.

"PETER!" Lois scrambled to get over to Peter, as his body slumped in the chair.

"DON'T MOVE!" Meg shouted, aiming at her mother, and pumping the shotgun again, then softened her voice, "Don't move. Stay right where you are, Mom. That's one down, three to go. Who wants to go next?" there was a long silence, "Well, if you won't choose, I will. Chris, my dear brother. I'm smarter than you. I might not be hot, but I'm hotter than you, at least. And yet I'm the one who gets all the abuse. You laugh with them, at me. You just... go along with the crowd. Why shouldn't I kill you?"

"No, sweetie!" Lois wailed, "You don't need to do-" she froze up as Meg pointed the shotgun at her again.

"Mom, I was really hoping to be able to kill you last," Meg warned her, "But if you start messing me around once more, I guess I won't get to do that. Stay where you are. If Chris is such a great son, he'll be able to think of a reason for me not to kill him."

Chris stared down the barrel of the shotgun, "Shouldn't you be, like, pumping the shotgun all the time?" he asked her, remembering the movies he'd seen.

"And waste perfectly good cartridges?" Meg laughed, "Weren't you listening when I said I've been practicing with this thing? Chris, among other things, you tried to set me up with a date with an evil monkey. Give me a reason not to kill you," she repeated slowly.

Chris swallowed. Well, at least he was smarter than Dad, actually thinking about his answer, "I, uh..." he scratched his head, "Well, I tried to get you a date for your prom, Stacy," he whined.

"Fat, ugly, and stupid," Meg said softly. She fired again, and Chris' head went all over the couch, also taking a chunk of the stuffing out of it.

Lois screamed again, and Stewie just grinned.

"Now," Meg pumped the shotgun a third time, and aimed it at Lois, "Two down, two to go," she told Lois. "Mom, I quit loving you when you started suggesting I get some attention by killing myself. You know how I said I wanted to kill you last? Well, I guess I lied. But you're smart, Lois. Can you give me a reason to spare your life?"

"Oh, blow her head off right now!" Stewie begged.

Lois swallowed, staring down the end of a shotgun, "Oh sweetie-pie, I know you're very angry," she managed to Meg, nudging it down so that it was at least not aimed directly at her face.

"You worked that out all by yourself, Mom?" Meg's two-handed grip didn't loosen one bit.

"You've killed Peter, and Chris... " tears were welling up in Lois' eyes as she continued, "Don't you feel sorry about that in the slightest?"

"No, Mom," Meg said, her face expressionless, "Don't suggest I'm crazy. That would suggest I didn't know exactly what I am doing right now."

Lois clutched Stewie, "Don't destroy this family any more. Don't kill me or Stewie too. You're not thinking straight, but if you'll just put down that gun... we can go out into the woods and bury the bodies, mother and daughter. It'll be okay! All you have to do is not kill me! You'll get all the attention you ever needed! This isn't what you really want!"

"Oh, but it is," Meg replied, "I've wanted this for ten years now."

She fired, blowing a hole right through her mother's chest. Lois stared at her, living for a few more seconds as she tried to see some form of remorse in her daughter's eyes. She found none.

"All right!" Stewie pumped a little fist into the air.

Meg pumped the shotgun, "Well, Stewie?" she aimed at her smallest brother, "My little crack-baby. It's your turn. Persuade me not to kill you. It's really quite simple. Even a baby should be able to work it out. Of course..." she gestured to the three dead bodies on the couch, "They couldn't."

"You're a dab hand with that shotgun," Stewie told her, "With my brains, and your muscle, and all the equipment I've got upstairs, we could easily rule the world!" he looked at the others, "You've just killed your family! I know you've got it in you to be my trusted Second-In-Command!"

Meg seemed almost to consider this for a moment, but then shook her head, "Wrong answer, Stewie. I didn't kill them so I could rule the world, or get rich, or anything like that. You can't even work out why I killed them. Which makes you just like them."

Stewie opened his mouth to protest, just before the shot hit him in the chest, scattering blood all over Lois' corpse. Meg nodded in satisfaction, smiling very slightly. Now there was only one more person to take care of.

"Meg?" she turned, to look at Brian staggering down the stairs. He stumbled on the last step, and tripped, falling right on his ass. In one hand he was holding an empty bottle of vodka. In the other, a handgun, "Meg... you're dead too? What're you doin'... in hell?" he slurred.

"I'm not dead, Brian," Meg reloaded the shotgun rapidly and prepared it to fire, watching that handgun carefully. Brian was even more drunk than he had been an hour ago when she'd looked in on him; who knew what he might try and do with it?

"You gotta be..." he slurred, trying to stand, and pointing the gun at his head again, "I pointed this gun... at my head, and I fired, and I heard this big bang... so I gotta be dead..." He pulled the trigger again. There was an empty *click*.

"Not with the safety on, you won't be," Meg told him, mockingly.

"Safety?" Brian looked at the gun drunkenly, "Oh yeah, nearly forgot..." he took off the safety, and aimed at his head again. He fired again. Once again there was an empty *click*.

"And cock it too, you idiot," Meg stepped forward quickly and grabbed the gun out of Brian's hands, pressing the release mechanism for the magazine and throwing the gun aside, "Look, Peter, Lois, Chris and Stewie are dead. The bang you heard must have been one of the shots I fired."

Brian looked, bleary-eyed, around her at the couch with four dead humans on it. Then at the shotgun in Meg's hands. Drunk and depressed as he was, he could tell who had just done it. He tried to find a part of him that cared, and wanted to scream at her, 'What have you done?' but he couldn't find it in him, "You killed them, Meg," he slurred.

"Yes," Meg replied, aiming the shotgun at him, "And now Brian, I'm going to finish the job, and kill you. Unless you can come up with a damn good reason why I shouldn't. They couldn't."

Brian looked up at the gun for a long time, "I... I can't," he said finally, before vomiting quite a large amount of vodka onto the carpet, "I mean... I've tried to be there for you... tried to make the others get it... but I didn't really... didn't try enough... didn't bother with anybody's feelings but mine... didn't help anybody... didn't change anything..." he lay his head back against the staircase, "I'm such a bastard..."

Meg maintained her grip, the shotgun still aimed at Brian.

"I'm pathetic... I'm so fucking pathetic that I'm too fucking drunk to even kill myself... so you might as well do it, Meg..." Brian began to cry. It really was quite pathetic to watch, "Just... put a shell through my head already," he told her.

Several seconds passed, and yet no shells seemed to be forthcoming, "No, I don't think I will, just yet," Meg said thoughtfully.

"Why not? 'Cus I'm more miserable this way?" Brian asked her despondently, "I let them hurt you... I watched them make a mockery of your existance... I went along with it because it was easier than trying to do anything... I'm such a fucking hypocrite... Oh god Meg... I'm so sorry..." he slurred.

Meg lowered the shotgun and holstered it, "Apology accepted," she told him, her voice softening.

"Wh-What?" Brian looked up at her, confused.

"That was all I wanted to hear from any one of them," Meg pointed to the bodies, "All they had to say was that they were sorry for all the pain they'd caused me. But they couldn't say it, even with a loaded shotgun at their heads. They didn't believe they'd ever done anything to me that was worth being sorry for..."

Brian sobered up a little, "You... killed them because they didn't say they were sorry?" he slurred.

"No," Meg told him, "I killed them because of all the emotional abuse over the course of 18 years. Don't feel too great, Brian. I got a load of crap from you too."

"Yeah... I guess I'm sorry about that..." Brian slurred, "But... it couldn't have been just... I mean, it could have... I mean, why not kill me too?"

"Because you just said sorry," Meg told him, "And because you noticed when I was going out to the shooting range – you didn't know where I was going but you noticed I wasn't here. And you called me by my name. Half the time Peter and Lois didn't even bother calling me by my name."

"I just wanted to die," Brian mumbled. He looked at the empty bottle of vodka in his hand, and threw it across the room, where it smashed against a wall, "It doesn't matter... if I live or die... Just fire the gun, Meg."

"You're drunk, and you're stoned," Meg told him, "I don't know if it will make you feel any better, but I care if you live or die. I won't kill you if you admit that doesn't make you feel better. I'm used to my opinions not mattering too, you know."

Brian looked at her, "You know," he slurred, "It sounds crazy but I think that does make me feel a little better. But... the bodies... the cops... What're you gonna do now?"

"I spent six months planning this," Meg told Brian, "Since the day everybody forgot my 18th birthday – except you. I'm packed. I've been saving money for years. And I'm driving non-stop to Laredo, on the Mexican border, tonight," she offered him her hand, "Do you wanna come?"

Brian looked at Meg's hand. He looked at the room, with four dead bodies, a smashed bottle of vodka, and a congealing pool of his own vomit. He looked at himself. He'd just tried to kill himself at least three times tonight. And been at the wrong end of a shotgun that had already killed four people. And he was still alive. He looked up at Meg.

Okay, so she wasn't as stunningly beautiful as Lois or some of the other women he'd dated. And she wasn't some kind of super-genius. But still... she'd just wiped out his old life. The one that had been dragging him around in circles for years. Wasn't this was what he'd wanted to do with his suicide – to get away from this place? Did he really want to go with Meg, who was now a multiple murderer?

He took her hand, staggering to his feet, "I... I'd forgotten you could drive," he commented drunkenly.

"There's a lot about me you don't know, Brian," Meg replied with a small smile. The old Meg would never have come up with a clever remark like that. There was something different about her now – and not just the shotgun holstered at her hip.

"Mexico, here we come," Brian returned.

Breech: Ha! Meg and Brian, the show's two biggest Butt Monkeys, now on their way to Mexico, leaving four dead bodies behind them! This could be just a one-shot, or I could continue it. If people want me to continue, I will. However, continuing this fic will probably result in Meg/Brian.

And if I do continue it, I have several dandy ideas to increase the fun they have on their way.