The Calm Before (Reign and Ruin novella) by Jules Hedger

Marty
    The Worst Comedown
Yet

    "If I have to hear one
more preteen degenerate sing in falsetto about his lost baby love
in bad harmony, I will literally jump the fence."
    Marty looked
over at his friend Ricky and rolled his eyes. Plastic crackled as
the discarded shopping bags near their feet shifted in the wind.
Ricky stomped one down with his large construction boot to keep it
from flying away.
    "No, I am dead
serious, Marty. I'll be one of those people you see on E! or TMZ,
caught trying to jump the barbed wire around Harry Styles' house
with a blunt pair of scissors." He paused to consider. "I would
tell them the aliens told me to do it or that he promised me a
music career. I would need to convince them I was crazy instead of
just plain murderous."
    "Ricky, you are crazy," Marty said and rummaged in the plastic bags.
Ricky laughed and slapped him soundly on the back.
    "Yes siree,
paranoid schizophrenia. Or bi-polar or maybe the flu. But I'm not
right, that's for sure."
    Marty and Ricky
sat for a moment on the steps of the drug store. Cars whizzed by on
their way to someplace important: dinner and two-for-one Black
Russians at Stan's or Chloe's or the Plaza Hotel. Or perhaps they
were rushing out of New York to their families in Brooklyn or
Stanton Island or some other such residential and less littered
place Marty had never been to. He sighed and took a swig of his
energy drink, grimacing at the acrid, chemical taste of gasoline
and sugar. Ricky was drinking warm beer in a paper bag.
    Marty glanced
at his watch and counted down until, as they did every night like
clockwork, the neon signs of the liquor store across the street
flashed on through the dim, gray dusk light. It was almost time to
see Steve, thank the Painter. Quite literally, in fact. He couldn't
listen to Ricky for much longer.
    “Feeling a bit
nervous, Marty? Got the pains yet?”
    “Please shut
up, Ricky,” Marty said with a grimace and heard Ricky chortle.
    These trips
always became more and more inconvenient. And yet more and more
necessary. Every time he came to visit Steve, almighty Painter of
Palet – and a very interesting guy, in fact – it became more and
more essential for him to play the part. Become the addict. And at
first it was easy.
    At first, he
was the Supplier. The Enabler. Simply that. He could give Steve his
drugs without taking any himself, but the more the Painter took the
more necessary it was to stay with him for protection. Hell, it was
his country's livelihood, after all! He wasn't the Caretaker for
nothing. But then they became friends. Then he was being invited
in, invited to partake. And suddenly he was shooting up with his
almighty God and watching alongside him as their dreams morphed
into creatures they could both see stretch across the walls. The
Council would kill him if they knew.
    The smooth
swish of an automatic door sounded behind him. Marty shivered as
the cold wind blew strains of a country music song briefly across
his ears. Ricky was still talking about insipid teen pop stars and
Marty knew he had only a few more minutes before his source came by
to drop off his supply. And he really needed it now. His toe was
tapping to the lyrics of a heart-broken Texan because he hadn't had
a hit of heroin for at least a week. The marble had taken the edge
off but still . . .
    Well, seven
days in Palet. In this dimension time ran differently and according
to every person on Earth he was regular fixture at the drugstore
stoop. But in reality there could be breaks for up to a month
before traveling back to Earth for a visit. It was a good job Steve
was high all the time. He never commented on the mysterious
accelerated aging.
    Maggie, of
course, was another matter. That girl . . . that girl noticed too
much. Marty shook his head to banish the butterflies of her face
and eyes and tits that flashed across his brain. Too young. Too
damaged. He might be the guy sat on a stoop with a lunatic but she
was the one with the mask. But