If he blurred his vision, he could almost see her. Squinting his eyes against the persistent glare of Em City's perpetual noon, she began to come into focus, a shimmering mirage in his wasted wasteland. The D-tabs helped too of course, but he liked to think it was the force of his want that kept her hovering above his pod, just short of angelic. He could almost believe she was heaven-sent if it weren't for that thin piece of reality slowly creeping in, peripherally, stealthily reminding him of who she was.
Traitor. Bitch. Slut.
Maritza.
But for all the things she'd done for him, to him, because of him, just the good seeped through here. Floating on this cloud of denial, he remembered only that he'd caressed her body, touched that beautiful face, watched a child grow beneath that perfect, olive skin. And the beauty of Torquemada's drug was that in his euphoria, the baby kept growing. It became a boy, a man, it made his daddy proud. Within Destiny, the happy family stayed just that, a permanent portrait, everyone all smiles. But the smiles were false and the picture an illusion. Because when the tabs wore off, and they always did, he was alone.
And as alone as he'd always felt, there was no isolation like the one that followed Destiny's high. It was a bottomless, soul-ripping event, full of cold sweats and a fear so palpable he'd wake up screaming. And the scream would never stop, it would just turn itself inward until every blood vessel, every nerve, every artery hummed with a never ending wail. It was in these moments that he'd promise to give it up, allowing himself to slip into the apathetic shuffling zombie, fighting to stay awake and alert as he roamed the halls of Oz. But invariably, he'd come back, not quite begging, exactly, to Torquemada's forgiving grace and lazily slip a small, green tab underneath his tongue as Torquemada would slip his tongue around something far different.
But lately, he'd found a balance. The scream was merely a whimper as Maritza glided down his body, pausing to lay a finger down the side of his face, tracing the faded scar there. She understood the scar, understood how God worked. An eye for an eye, a face for a life. Maritza kept him going. She gave him nothing, but it was all he had. Oh God, if anyone understood him, what he'd done, it was her. He could tell by the way she held him. The secret to happiness had come out of her, out of these moment. You couldn't find happiness in what was, you had to find it in what could be. And if the hands roaming dangerously close to his waist weren't Maritza's, then he sure as hell could pretend they were.
The world turns black suddenly and the hands become more daring, emboldened by their sudden enclosure in darkness. It is her fingers lightly tapping the inside of his thighs, her tongue flicking his ear, tracing a path down his neck, her voice like liquid steam mumbling lies down his chest. It is her pushing him through until morning.
One more D-tab and he could almost believe it himself.