Epilogue: Temptation

Perry White had not been happy with her lack of progress.

"Lane, you've spent two weeks on this, and no leads. Unless you can find something solid by tomorrow morning, I'm going to have to pull you off of this."

The reporter frowned. "Got it, Chief."

It had been two weeks since that night. Two weeks of sleepless nights, of days pounding the pavements looking for the missing women. Checking in with friends, calling relatives, chatting up cops and security guards and street folk. Looking absolutely everywhere and talking to absolutely everyone...

...except the one place and one person that Lois knew had some connection with them.

Home. Dropping her purse by the door. Kicking off the flats she normally wore to work. Into the bathroom. What was left of the bag was in a large pill bottle in the medicine cabinet. She'd left a credit card, plastic straw, and hand-mirror on the edge of sink.

That first night she got home, Lois had been too tired to flush the ****. Had put an ice pack between her legs and tried to cry herself to sleep, but no tears had come. Numb and tired, she had eventually gotten up and gone into work. Sniffling through the day, feeling down and lethargic, sad and sore down between her legs, she hadn't wanted to think about it.

Sleep after that had been fitful. The events had come back to her with a nightmarish lucidity. Snorting cocaine off a cock in the bar as the dickgirls watched. Letting herself get railed from behind, bent over the desk in Angelica's office. Then the end of the night, the endless succession of faces, of cocks...

She managed it two days before she broke down and had a taste.

After that it was a matter of managing it. The Daily Planet had good resources on **** addiction, counseling. How to live with it, how to quit. Lois had **** herself to stare at the faces of the addicts, the before and after pictures. Cold turkey, she knew, rarely worked. It was so much harder when you were doing it to muster the will to just stop.

It wasn't even a craving, at least not as Lois would term it. More like a convenience. She would be tired, or hungry, and a little bump would get her through. Just long enough to keep moving, keep busy. To keep the memories at bay.

Every day the pile of white powder in the baggie got a little smaller, and Lois told herself that was a good thing. Once it ran out, she could get clean. No more temptation.

It had gotten to the point that when she did dream, she didn't even feel bad about what she had done. The reporter would wake up in a sweet, hand between her legs, as though masturbating in her sleep.

"It's what I did, but it's not who I am," Lois remembered saying out loud to herself, as she stared in the refrigerator at food she couldn't bring herself to eat. It wasn't like a diet, exactly. The reporter knew she should eat, but couldn't feel the hunger. Instead she made herself take vitamins, washed down with plenty of water. Keep hydrated, keep the essential nutrients, if not the calories. Managing things, again.

Lois had been managing things quite well, she thought. Even lost a couple pounds.

Now here she was, getting in her club clothes again. A different shirt this time, something black and tight across her breasts. Different shoes too, real fuck-me pumps. Black lipstick to match her mood. More makeup than she normally wore. Lois stared at herself in the mirror, as the night came over Metropolis.

Soon, she knew, the doors of the club would open. Perry White needed results. Lois knew there was only one place she could go to get them. It was time to face the source of her temptation.

"All I have to do is say no," Lois told herself on the cab ride there. "I'm strong. I can do that."

In her heart, Lois knew she would have to do whatever it took this time, to get what she needed.

This time, she was prepared for whatever or whomever she had to in order to do that.