Waking up was the worst part of Ebb's day. It had been for as long as he remembered. The terrible feeling of unease sweeping over you from your toes to your brain, the coldness of it, the shame and humiliation of discovering yourself lying amongst filthy sheets and knowing, somewhere in your half-restored consciousness, that you are a failure in some indefinable way.
Going to sleep was the best. The warm pressure in your head, the growing disorientation and then, more often than not, bliss worth more than any money could buy. Ebb had never felt it was too much to pay for, to feel that way, to feel godly.
Not that he was strapped for cash. It had been years since he had had to worry on that account. Ebb was willing to pay whatever was asked of him but there were others willing to pay whatever he asked. He always had more money in his pockets than he knew what to do with.
There was only one thing he needed to buy. Forget food, forget property, forget investment. Ebb could buy paradise by the gram.
If he'd been able to get the good stuff then it could happen all at once. The world just disappeared and with it went everything bad and everything cold and everything wrong. It felt blue, like water, like heaven.
Less pure, it reached him in waves, lapping over him like the sea on a beach, washing him away. It weighed him down, made him tingle, until at last his eyelids would drag him off to sleep and the mellow sweetness of dreams. They filled him, more vivid than any reality.
Sometimes when he woke, some of the warmth stayed with him and he opened his eyes to find himself filled with a bubble of brilliant optimism, some of his perfection retained even now, even perhaps hours or perhaps days since he slept.
Ebb had known nights under that power that he would never forget. He had been filled by such a brilliance, such an sense of achievement and wonder that had come from no external source, that he knew they would remain fixed in his mind as though he really had done something truly remarkable, really had earned that feeling. The pinnacle of his life's experiences had been in this dank room, and others like it.
Sometimes he was truly unconscious, sometimes only in a pseudo-sleep of waking dreams. It mattered not to him. He was the stuff of miracles when it flowed in his bloodstream, untouched and untouchable. He was the only pure thing in the world.
It was the strangest thing in the world to taste, yet he loved it. It felt like nothing on his tongue, nothing at all. Yet when he exhaled, the perfume of it filled him up, his mouth and nose, of flowers and sweetness. It was the breath of angels.
But this morning Ebb awoke and retained nothing of his glamour the night before. He was twisted amongst the soiled sheets, his forehead slick with sweat, his eyes staring unseeingly at the cracked, damp plaster of the wall opposite. Somewhere in the distance, there were sounds. They did not matter.
The room was tiny but it was his. Ebb owned this place, he was the master. What did it matter if he was rarely seen, flying in unreal skies? He still had the right to respect, to his own room. And this was it, small and filthy and thick with the flowered smell hanging in the air, but quite enough for his purposes.
What did it matter what a room looked like? He didn't go there to look at it.
He stood and knew at once his weakness, struck out a hand against the wall to catch himself. Breathing hard, the air rough against his throat, he gazed for a moment at the mirror on the wall. He kept it there for this purpose. It fascinated him.
The figure looking back at him was scarcely human. Reddened eyes were huge in his wasted face, sunken in, hollowed out. Around his eyes were great dark smudges like bruises but where they came from, Ebb could not explain. His lips were thin and pale, chapped, and when his tongue darted out to dampen them, he could taste something like the drug but smokier, like burnt sugar.
His hair was a mess upon his head, long and unkempt, trailing in strands almost to his shoulders, sticking to his sweat-soaked neck. It was, perhaps, brown. Ebb wasn't so good at colours anymore. Colours in this reality were nothing compared to the ones in his mind.
Ebb stood like a skeleton, his ribcage hollow and broken, his skin pale like some underground creature that never saw the sun. Ebb didn't mind. He had a better sun than that weak, cold copy this world could offer him. He was shirtless, with the shadows of bruises on his skin and every bone jutting out grotesquely.
He looked inhuman, alien. He stared at himself for a long time, not repulsed but merely intrigued. There was something beautiful in the terribleness of it. He was losing the part of him that was mortal, retaining only that which was angelic and untouchable.
He didn't want to wake up now. He reached out his hand automatically, scrabbling on the low table near the mirror. Empty. Nothing there. He cursed and his tongue felt heavy in his mouth, unused to the movement.
No matter. His voice would come back. It had been the one blessing he was born with. He wasn't much to look at but he had a voice that was chocolate and earth, deep and rich and warm, reassuring, persuading, slipping beneath a listener's skin and soothing them. His voice had taken him this far, after all. When you sounded so beautiful, you could persuade people to buy anything.
With weak hands, Ebb pulled a greying shirt around himself, buttoning it up erratically. He staggered as he walked across the room, fumbled to open the door. His body would take a few minutes to get used to action again.
There was someone sitting on the stairs, huddled and hunched, a pile of rags, whimpering. Ebb stepped over them without a second glance. Downstairs, the room was filled with people, lost in the haze of smoke. Some spoke in muted voices, sometimes talking to each other but, equally often, to the walls or empty space, sometimes in nonsense words. Others were silent, lost in themselves one way or another.
There was a woman with missing teeth behind the bar who gave Ebb a grin as he approached and bobbed a half-hearted, mocking curtsey.
"Them's in the back room," she jerked a thumb towards a door behind the bar. "Waiting for you."
Ebb blinked at her, uncomprehending, for a moment until understanding finally reached him. It was one of those days. Of course it was. He smiled at the thought of it, a thin, stretched smile that showed the yellowing of his teeth.
"Give me some," he held out his hand.
She didn't caution him as she handed it over as she might anyone else heading for the back room who had just asked for a dose. She knew, as everyone knew, that Ebb was no fool, for all his brains were fried and addled. He wouldn't take enough to make him insensible, not when there was a game to be played.
Ebb made his way slowly through the door into the back room, letting just enough reality settle back in before he made his entrance. He could get rid of it once he was sat down with the rest but until then it would help if he could walk without wanting to dance or fall.
It was dimly lit beyond, heavy with smoke. Ebb smiled, tucking his fresh dose into a pocket. He wouldn't be needing it after all. They were burning enough in there to take the sting out of life.
There were figures in the darkness, men set around a table, some slouched and half-crumpled, others bright-eyed and eager. Ebb's customary place was left empty, though most of those in the room had never met him before. He sank into his chair gratefully, his body folding over on itself.
"Now that you're here," someone spoke up, "finally. Shall we begin?"
"By all means," Ebb answered and his voice seemed to hang in the air.
There was the clink of coins as money was removed from various pockets and tossed into the centre of the table. Ebb added his own share, giving it over without a thought. Then one of the younger members produced the tools of the game, grinning a sharp-toothed grin, eyes blazing with the want of it.
He lay the pistol on the table and sat back, waiting.
The man who was to be first, sitting to the right of where an empty seat had recently been filled, lifted it in his hands and gently, carefully, loaded a single shot. With great ceremony, he lifted it up and rested the barrel against his temple.
Ebb sat forward in his seat, taking a deep, sweet breath of the smoky air. He tingled with the excitement, the suspense. He was not the only one. All those at the table bore the same expression, a kind of quiet but desperate longing.
The finger was to the trigger now. Ebb found himself torn between hope that the stranger won, but also a kind of hunger for him to lose. It was always so satisfying when someone lost. It made him feel so much, in that rush of fear and relief and shock. He rarely felt that strong a feeling in the real world.
That was why he played, after all. The game was keeping him alive.
The trigger pulled. The gun fired. The sound of it was briefly deafening before the man slowly lowered it away from his head with shaking hands. He was still alive and it was apparent that, until that moment, he had once again forgotten what that meant to him.
The next took the pistol from him, eagerly, all but snatching it out of his hands. He didn't even hesitate as he fired it. The sound resounded and the young man was laughing as he handed the pistol to the next while money was being bid and won quietly, subtly, almost without conversation.
The pistol made its rounds of the table and those who lived — and all seemed to be living today — were glowing with it once it was done, scooping in the money they had won through their survival. Ebb didn't mind how much he lost. Most, regardless, he would get back one way or another.
The pistol reached him, passed from another pair of trembling hands. Ebb took it, weighed it steadily, spun the chamber automatically. He felt dreamy, peaceful. The world seemed to have a shimmer to the edges of it. He felt good like this, good and unreal.
Shivers ran up and down his spine as he placed the barrel to the side of his head and took a deep breath, counting his heartbeats. He wanted to savour this moment, the thrill of anticipation, knowing that these could be his last seconds on earth, though deep inside he was convinced they couldn't be.
Ebb pulled the trigger but he never heard the sound of the shot die away.