Euphoria

The mirror shattered. Cracked edges appeared where Caleb’s knuckles met its surface. The impact was not hard enough to draw blood, just hard enough to fracture the reflection staring back – a pale, hollow-eyed version of himself, skin tight over sharp cheekbones, hair lank and greasy. He’d done it before. Always the same ritual: confront the ruin, shatter the evidence, let the shards cut deeper than the glass.

"Again," he rasped, the word tasting like ash. "I'm done with this shit."

But the Mirage implant behind his left temple pulsed, a cold, rhythmic thrum against his skull. It wasn't just tech; it was him. A symbiotic parasite feeding on his despair. The corporation that installed it – NeuroVerve – called it "emotional optimization." Caleb knew it was only a marketing trick. In reality, it was a cage, and the key was a chemical cocktail called Euphoria, sold only through their licensed dispensers. His addiction.

He stumbled back from the broken mirror, ignoring the tiny cuts on his knuckles. The apartment was a tomb. Stale air, unwashed dishes, the low hum of the AC unit the only sign of life. Outside, the perpetual twilight of New York bled through the grimy window, indifferent to what was going inside. The city didn't care if Caleb lived or died. Only the Mirage cared, and only insofar as he kept paying for his Euphoria fix.

The withdrawal was starting. A familiar, crawling itch under his skin, a phantom limb ache where his sense of self used to be. His thoughts fractured, splintering into jagged shards of remembered shame, the crushing weight of failure, the sheer effort of feeling anything at all.

He was the problem. Always had been. His choices, his weaknesses, his inability to just… be. The Mirage didn't create his pain; it amplified it, offered a temporary, chemical oblivion, and then demanded a tithe of his soul to pay for it. It was extortion, sanctioned by law and marketed as wellness.

The mirror reflected more than his broken image. It reflected the pain he had inflicted on himself and everyone around him. It proved that he was broken, showed the extent of his damage and that he needed the numbness Euphoria promised. It was a masochistic cycle: self-destruction to fuel the escape, escape to postpone the self-destruction.

He fumbled for the datapad, his thumb hovering over the NeuroVerve app. The craving was a physical thing now, a cold serpent coiling in his gut, squeezing his lungs. His breath hitched as the snake started to choke him from the inside. The Mirage pulsed faster, a predatory rhythm. Feed me. You know you need me.

His hate was rising. Not for NeuroVerve, not for the dealers who lurked in the city's underbelly. The hate was for himself. For the weakness that made him crawl back every time. For the way the Euphoria made him feel almost human, almost whole, for a few stolen hours, only to crash harder, lower, more broken. The hate was his last defense, a shield against the deeper, more terrifying truth: he was lost, adrift in his own wreckage.

He ordered the Euphoria. Standard delivery, discreet. The confirmation ping felt like a defeat. A wave of relief washed over him, instantly followed by disgust. He sank to the floor, back against the cold wall, pulling his knees to his chest. The apartment shrank around him, its silence became oppressive. The serpent inside his chest gave him the slack he needed to wait for delivery.

And so he waited. The initial feeling of euphoria, a warm blanket numbing the edges. Then the artificial confidence, accompanied by the temporary erasure of regret. Followed by the slow, inevitable slide back into the abyss. The comedown was similar to a physical assault: nausea, tremors, the crushing weight of reality amplified tenfold by the absence of the chemical crutch. And the shame. Always the shame. Shame for needing it, shame for failing to quit, shame for the person he became under its influence.

After all the things he has done, all the things he has lost, what was there left to grieve? The life he'd squandered? The relationships he'd destroyed? The person he used to be, a ghost haunting the edges of his memory? Grieving implied loss. He felt like he'd been grieving his own existence for years, piece by piece. The Euphoria just put that grief on pause, charging interest compounded in self-loathing.

The delivery drone buzzed softly at the door. Caleb didn't move. He just listened to the sound, a harbinger of his own further unraveling. Finally, he dragged himself up, paid the drone, and took the small, innocuous vial. The label read simply: Euphoria – NeuroVerve Licensed Product. Like a prescription for his own demise.

He didn't inject it immediately. He held the vial, cold in his hand. He looked at the shattered mirror again, at the fractured image of the hollow-eyed addict. The hate burned hotter, a clean, sharp flame cutting through the fog of craving.

His emotions made him paranoid. The implant demanded fuel, the serpent demanded obedience, his hate demanded recognition. Their voices yelled to him like angry mob, compelling him to inject the Euphoria and be done with it. And amidst this chaos, a whisper reached his ear. It was something his ex-wife had told him years ago.

“This addiction isn’t you. It’s a parasite. And it’s eating you alive.”

For a moment, he saw her face again. She was worried, angry and most of all disappointed. He nodded, she was right – as always. And he didn’t know how to respond. The vial contained an answer. It would tell him how he could – or should – have reacted.

“I’m done with this shit.” He said again.

He didn't immediately smash the vial. Instead, he walked to the small kitchen alcove, opened the waste disposal chute, and dropped the vial inside. The whir of the disposal unit was loud in the silent room. He had made his choice.

The withdrawal hit him like a physical blow. The serpent in his gut tightened, his hands shook violently, a cold sweat broke out. The Mirage pulsed angrily, a sharp, insistent sting against his skull. *ERROR. OPTIMIZATION LEVEL CRITICAL. SUPPLY REQUIRED. IMMEDIATELY.* The voice wasn't auditory; it was a pressure inside his head, demanding compliance.

The hate surged back, but this time it was different. It wasn't just self-loathing. It was directed outward. At the corporation that profited from his pain. At the system that made this dependency possible. At the cage he'd willingly entered. The hate was fuel. It was ugly, but it was his.

The ugliness of his hate ignited a tiny, fragile spark. He focused on the spark, while he submerged himself into chaos again. His phantom limbs clawed at him, screaming for the numbness. Images appeared in his mind of nights spent curled on the floor, retching, weeping in his own waste. Visions of things to come. When you let the monster become too powerful to fight it. Nevertheless, he held on to the tiny, fragile spark. It would need to suffice to withstand the crushing weight of facing his life without the chemical buffer. There was no turning back now.

He was beyond the point of calling for help. He was no longer in control of his own body. He had never gone this far before. He had never before stopped pretending the Euphoria was a solution. But he’d seen the true face of his enemy every time he looked into the mirror. It wasn’t the solution, it was the disease.

He stopped thinking about the past. He couldn't afford it. There was only the present, agonizing moment, and the terrifying, uncertain future. The grief had to be burned away, replaced by something else. Resolve. Rage. A desperate, clawing will to reclaim what little was left of him.

He wasn't whole anymore. The addiction had carved pieces out of him. The shame, the wrong decisions, the burned bridges – they were scars on his soul. Deep, ugly scars. He might never be whole again. The Mirage would fix those things by replacing them with a phantom limb, a constant reminder of what he'd lost and what he'd fought against.

NeuroVerve had taken his money, his time, his peace, his relationships. It had taken pieces of his soul. It had taken his face, his reflection, his ability to see himself clearly. It had taken most of him. But not all. Her image appeared in his head again. The fix had never been able to eradicate the feelings he had for her. Coming home to her always had brightened up his mood. And now he was holding on to that little speck of light, hoping it would save his life.

He couldn't give the addiction any more of himself. Not to the Euphoria. Not to the Mirage. Not to the self-destruction. He was tapped out. Empty. But in that emptiness, in the raw, screaming agony of withdrawal, there was also a terrifying, exhilarating clarity. He couldn't give any more away. There was nothing left to lose except the fight itself.

All alone in his apartment, Caleb sank to the floor, back against the wall. The Mirage pulses were excruciating now, a constant, high-frequency shriek in his mind. He wrapped his arms around himself, rocking slightly, teeth clenched against the waves of nausea and pain. He endured. He waited. Not for the Euphoria. He waited for the dawn he hadn't seen in years, knowing it would bring no easy salvation, only the harsh light of a new reality.