"I can't see shit," He heard someone say.
Steve tied the beige pantyhose around his arm, tapped the bubbles out from the syringe, and slid the needle into his skin. There were already charred marks on the inside of his elbow, but it slid in as if his skin had been made to sheath it.
The others accompanying him in the dark tunnels began to cook up more, and he found himself lost in the sound of crackling fire. He could feel his veins wriggling in his arms, like snakes in their nest.
He opened his mouth to speak, but euphoria made his body melt away.
The entire world went slow, like honey- thick and sweet.
Then his blood gradually began to turn to fire. He had been freezing a moment ago, but that, along with all of his other pains, were washed away. The blisters on his skin, the too tight muscles along his back and shoulders, all those little agonies had disappeared.
And then there were the angry, intricate red wounds that ran up and down his wrist, not in any pattern but just random slashes. The scream in his wrist died away as well.
It was like the ocean was breaking over his head and he was being swept out to sea. Nothing could touch him, and nothing in the world mattered.
Although he had been sitting with his back against the tunnel wall, he found himself slowly falling onto the wet floor, then in a fetal position. Every time he closed his eyes, it was like he was dreaming even though he knew he was awake. Dreams of beautiful things, things he would have never imagined before.
A sense of power throbbed inside of him, giddy and eager and too much for him to control. It whispered to him in tongues of fury, with promises of triumph. The fire was eating away at him, painfully but amazingly so.
Everything was strange and beautiful and swollen with possibilities. He was lost in the patterns of grime along the tunnels.
The feeling of control began to slip out of his fingers, and the only thing he did was lay there, waiting for the images that always came every time he was this high.
Suddenly, he could almost feel a soft hand caress his face. She was sitting besides him, wearing a short red dress so detailed that he almost believed she was really there. Buttery blonde hair framed her face and went down to almost her lower back. Her sapphire eyes seemed unrealistic against the porcelain of her skin.
The unpleasant sewer smell was long gone, and he no longer felt damp. Part of him wished the image before him was real, and began to think it was, but it wasn't. Only a memory of what he used to have.
She began to speak to him, with a voice so angelic and slow.
"You..." He began to say, his voice slurred and slow. "You fucked up... my life."