13. Reth #3
The sight of it hits me like a physical blow. The craving surges instantly, vicious and undeniable, crawling under my skin, making my muscles twitch and my mouth go dry in that familiar, humiliating way.
She has it.
She always has it.
The one thing that can make the voices stop. The one thing that can dull the sharp edges of this nightmare. The one thing that turns me into something pliable, something she can use however she wants.
Mary appears again, in the corner with the shadows where she always does. She’s here to remind me how much I need that vial, how desperate I am to make everything disappear. My gaze flicks from her to Valeria.
"If I didn't have somewhere to be," she says, almost to herself, stopping in front of me, head tilting slightly, "I'd stay. Spend some… quality time with you."
“Fuck you, you motherfucking cunt,” I blurt, the words raw and venomous, the memory of her pussy still clenching around me burning like acid in my brain.
Her eyes move over me with that particular hunger, ownership. The satisfaction of a collector regarding something that has been sufficiently reduced.
“You're at your most beautiful like this. Do you know that? When there's nothing left but the essential thing."
I look at the wall above her head, jaw locked so tight it hurts.
"Sophia," she says.
My eyes drop to hers involuntarily. She sees it. She always sees everything.
"There it is." Soft. Almost tender. "That response. That's what I wanted to see." She tilts her head the other way. Studies me. "Tell me about her."
“No.”
"Hmm." Valeria looks at me for a long moment. Something working behind her expression that she's not showing me yet. "And where did you meet her?"
I press my mouth together.
"Nazareth." Her voice drops to the frequency she reserves for the end of things. "Where did you meet Sophia?"
The craving is strong. Too strong. My heart’s beating impossibly fast. Chest tight. Barely able to breathe right. I fight it, teeth gritted, but my eyes keep flicking to her hand. She sees that too. Holds it out to me.
My body leans toward it before my mind can stop it.
“You see, Nazareth. I always have what you need.”
An animal sound rips from my throat, nostrils flaring, pulse racing.
Valeria rolls the vial gently across the floor toward me. It stops just within reach of my free hand.
The temptation is excruciating. The need claws at me from the inside, screaming that one hit will make the voices stop, will make the blood on my hands disappear, will let me forget the weight of the karambit and Sophia’s ruined eyes for just a little while.
I look at Mary again. Still standing there. Quiet. Aware. Haunting. I didn’t kill her…I didn’t…
Did I?
My head starts to hurt, flashes of her dead body, the poker, the blood, my hands. It’s all a mess, distorted, and I close my eyes, fighting against it. It’s too much. Too real.
“Jesus,” I moan. I hold out as long as I can—seconds, minutes, I don’t even know anymore—but the craving wins. It always wins.
With a growl, I snatch the vial with my free hand, shaking so badly I almost drop it.
The needle slides into purple skin, bruised by weeks of this same betrayal, and the warmth floods in almost immediately—thick, treacherous, seductive. It spreads through my veins like liquid fire, pushing the sharp edges of the horror back just enough to breathe.
The room softens at the corners. The stone walls stop pressing in quite so hard. The blood on my hands feels farther away.
For one blissful, shameful second, the craving eases. The warmth floods my veins almost immediately, spreading, dulling the sharp edges of the horror, pulling me under into that false, treacherous peace.
I hate how good it feels. I hate how my body sighs with relief, muscles unclenching, the constant tremor in my hands finally stilling. I hate that some broken part of me still chases this feeling like a dog chasing its own vomit.
The guilt twists sharper even as the warmth deepens.
Sophia’s face flickers behind my eyes, gold hair and green eyes and that smile that made me believe I could be more than the weapon Valeria made me.
I cling to it desperately, whispering her name like a prayer even as the drugs try to pull it away.
Valeria watches me with that satisfied, predatory calm, like she’s enjoying the exact moment I break a little more.
The hit settles deeper. The room tilts gently.
Mary’s gone. Thank God.
“Now tell me,” Valeria starts. “Where did you meet Sophia.”
I press my mouth together, but the room is already spinning in that sick, dreamy way. The drugs are sinking deeper, making the edges of everything soft and blurry, like the world is melting.
"Nazareth." Her voice drops to the frequency she reserves for the end of things. "Where did you meet Sophia?"
The memory surfaces—slow, slippery, fighting me. October. A pink lollipop extended in a small hand. Monsters deserve love too.
And then—
And then—
The image frays at the edges. Colors bleed. The crowd is there, the polka-dot dress, the lollipop… but her face—
Her face.
I reach for it desperately, but the harder I try, the more it blurs, like trying to hold smoke. My head feels heavy, stuffed with cotton, the drugs pulling everything apart. Time stretches and compresses. Seconds feel like minutes. Minutes feel like nothing.
"She—" I stop, my tongue thick and clumsy in my mouth. The words won’t line up right. “She was… there was a—”
"What, Nazareth?"
The room spins slowly. I blink hard, trying to focus, but everything feels distant, like I’m watching myself from underwater. The memory keeps slipping away no matter how hard I grab for it.
“I was watching her building, and she came outside and she—”
"You were watching her building." Valeria’s voice is careful. Surgical. "A woman you’d never met."
"I—yes, no." I shake my head, but the motion makes the room lurch sickeningly. “She gave me a heart-shaped lollipop, and I… fuck." I press my palm hard against my eye, trying to force the image to stay, but it’s dissolving faster now, colors running together. “Why can’t I… why is everything—”
The panic spikes, sharp and nauseating, cutting through the drug haze. My breathing turns ragged. I can feel myself unraveling, the last solid thing I had—the memory of her—crumbling between my fingers.
“Why can’t I remember?”
"Nazareth." Her voice softens to almost nothing. "You’re having trouble remembering because she doesn’t exist."
“No!” My gaze snaps to her, but the movement is sluggish, my head too heavy. Fury detonates somewhere far away, muffled by the drugs. “I don’t remember because of you! You did this, you fucking—”
“I know how you like to blame me for everything, sweet boy—”
“Don’t fucking call me that.” The words come out slurred, thick. “And she’s real." My voice cracks, breaking apart completely. “She’s real, I know she’s—”
"You’ve been in this room for so long, Nazareth. Alone. Unwell. The things the mind builds when it’s trying to survive—"
"She's real." I’m panting now, sweat mixing with the blood on my skin, the room spinning faster. The drugs are pulling me under, making everything feel unreal, dreamlike, terrifying.
"Then tell me her last name."
I open my mouth. Reach for it with everything I have left.
The name is there—it has to be there. I’ve said it. I know I’ve said it. I said it when I was inside her, when I was whispering it against her skin like a prayer. Sophia—
Sophia—
Sophia…who?
It doesn’t come.
The panic explodes into pure terror. My chest tightens until I can’t breathe. The room tilts violently. I feel like I’m falling even though I’m chained to the wall. Everything is slipping. Her face. Her voice. The way she looked at me like I was worth something.
"Tell me where she lives," Valeria says. Still soft. Still patient. "Tell me one specific thing about her that exists outside your own mind."
The compass. The needle. North.
I look at my hand, but it’s blurry, the ink swimming. The needle pointing at—
At what?
At who?
"She's—" My voice breaks apart completely now, thick and heavy and slurred. “She’s real, she has to be real, I felt her, I touched her, I held her, I—”
The words tumble out faster, more desperate, but they feel wrong in my mouth. My heart is pounding so hard it hurts.
How…it’s not supposed to do that. I’m supposed to feel nothing. But the panic is a living thing clawing at my throat as the last solid pieces of her start to dissolve right in front of me.
I can’t lose her.
Not her.
Just. Not fucking. Her.
Valeria moves toward the door. Pauses. Looks back at me one final time.
"There is no Sophia. There was never a Sophia."
"No." The word tears out of me, but it sounds weak, drugged, uncertain. "She exists. She was there…in Paris. In Greece. She was fucking there,” I mutter, but my mind’s scrambling desperately to find her while I’m saying the words, and the images are fading faster and faster.
“She was in here. A few minutes ago. She was right here.”
Bleeding.
Dying.
Because of what you did.
The door closes. The lock catches.
I look at the empty vial on the floor. Look at the compass. The needle pointing at north. At nothing. At a woman who might be a ghost I invented in the dark to survive this hell.
"Sophia." Her name into the room. Into the stone. Into the nothing. "You’re real. I know you’re real. You have to be real. What the fuck is happening to me?”
The room doesn't answer.
The room never answers.
The warmth spreads deeper, pulling me under, and I let it. Because if she’s not real, there’s nothing left to stay sober for. And if she is real… I can’t survive knowing I might have already forgotten her face.
Either way.
Either way the warmth is the only thing left.