by TheTimeTrust
Pete woke up in a completely dark room, his head still spinning. He muttered a few expletives as he wondered which dark alley he had nodded off in now. Maybe he needed to get off the sauce for a while, he thought to himself.
Strange, though: He was most definitely not sleeping outside in an alleyway. This room had temperature control. Was he in some kind of hospital? Pete was nonplussed; too many strange things had happened to him over the course of his thirty-some years for him to worry why he'd be in a hospital, and a WHOLE lot of strange stuff had occurred to him especially in the last couple of days.
Or was that just some pipe dream brought on by the booze? Pete laughed to himself. It had been a great dream. Well, everything except the part where that big blond guy got hit by that car. That wasn't too good. But ever since then it seemed like he was just the luckiest bastard in the world! He had taken a long swig of that strange-tasting booze he swiped from the dead man's pocket (he must've been really desperate) and his life had changed almost immediately. He had stumbled into a nearby store, still drunk and woozy from that strange drink, and all of a sudden a dozen bells, whistles and lights rang and flashed. Within minutes he was being told that he was the one-thousandth customer of some fancy department store. They took him into the back, cleaned him up, gave him new clothes, a shave, haircut and a manicure, and sent him off with a wad of Mandelovian dollars and some gift certificates to the restaurant next door, where he ate the best dinner he had ever had in his life!
While eating dinner, a man accidentally tripped him and insisted on giving him a bunch of money in order to prevent a lawsuit (whatever the heck that was). He also gave him this card to a private club he owned. Pete had already begun to sober up by that point, and he was clearheaded enough to read the address for the club and showed up there late that night. The man seemed happy to see him and ushered him into a back room, where several desperate-looking fellows were playing cards. He was put into a seat and given a handful of cards. Pete told them he didn't know how to play cards, and they laughed, telling him he'd do fine.
Well, Pete won the first hand, and everyone cheered him, making Pete feel really good. He won another hand, and they cheered him some more, urging him to throw in a little more money, since he was on a winning streak. So Pete reached into his pocket and took out the big wad of bills they'd given him at the department store. The other men's eyes bulged wide as they saw it, and they all smirked as they quickly matched his bet. One of them, short of cash, put down the deed of ownership of some little food company as his bet.
After the next round, none of the men were smiling. Most of the cash now sat on Pete's side of the table. As Pete got up to leave, the men protested, saying he had to give them a chance to win some of it back -- it was only fair -- so Pete sat back down and played another round with a couple of the men who still had some money; the others had already folded. Another hand was played, and Pete won this one as well. Another hand was played, and still another hand. Finally, the men who had lost all their money were angry. One of them pulled a gun and pointed it at Pete, who was more than willing to give him some of his money, since he didn't really need all that much, anyway. The man stared at Pete as if he were from some other planet and was ready to shoot him. Pete rose from his chair to plead for his life, but as the man cocked his gun and prepared to fire it at him, a cat that had been sleeping peacefully up until now took this opportunity to chase a mouse across the room under the table. The man with the gun tripped and fell backward, causing the gun to go off and hit the ceiling light. The room was plunged into darkness.
Pete was scared, so he grabbed some of the money he had won (he didn't even try to or want to take all of it) and got the heck out of there while he was still alive. By the time he had reached the alleyway, the men had recovered from the confusion and realized that most of the money was still sitting on the table. A couple of the men -- particularly the one who had tried to kill Pete -- weren't satisfied with this and decided to finish him off so he couldn't tell anyone about it. One of them seemed really angry that the ownership deed to his food company, which Pete had rightfully won, had not been left behind with the rest of the cash.
Pete ran for a while in terror, finally scrambling out into the street, where he was almost run over by a big limousine. The burly limo driver got out of his car and helped him up after the man riding inside insisted that he take him to see his private doctor to ensure that he was all right. This rich man seemed really anxious that Pete wasn't going to file one of those lawsuits (there was that strange word again, whatever it meant) against him. Pete was taken to this man's large mansion, a refurbished eighteenth century castle once owned by the nobility of a nearby country. There, an old doctor who spoke no English pronounced him healthy as a horse, if a little on the alcoholic side.
The rich man insisted on Pete staying the night at his castle to ensure that he remained uninjured, and then invited him the next morning to attend an auction with him. Pete shrugged his shoulders and agreed. He was just going along for the ride in the crazy turn of events happening to him lately. At the fancy auction, Pete rose his hand to ask where the bathroom was, and some guy shouted "SOLD!" at him. The rich man next to him was all grins as Pete paid for the mystery item with the wads of dollars in his pocket, which turned out to be a once-in-a-lifetime, privately sponsored trip to the Space Station Mir! Pete had no idea what that was, but everyone seemed really happy about it, as they were all patting him on the back and on the head and shouting words of congratulations. Pete just grinned and nodded his head, understanding nothing.
After a big lunch at the rich man's expense, Pete said his farewell to him and his family and set off to look for a wad of string he'd left back in some alley somewhere. He stopped in at a convenience store and picked up a flask of whiskey and was pressured into buying a Mandelovian Lottery ticket as well. Pete didn't want to argue with the guy, so he just handed over the extra dollar and took the ticket, stuffing it in his pocket next to the rubber bands he'd picked up off the street.
He wandered the streets for a few hours, but got hungry and walked into a cafe to pick up a bite of food. He couldn't figure out which pocket he had stuffed the cash, though, so he took everything out of his pockets and laid them on the counter as he looked for it. The cafe lady's mouth dropped as she looked down at the lottery ticket Pete put on the counter, then up at the TV, then back down at the lottery ticket. She started screaming, which startled Pete terribly, until he realized that she was excited in a happy way. She kept on shouting gleefully at him, "You won! You won! You won!" Pete couldn't see what there was to get excited about, but he let her take him by the hand and walk down to the TV station to redeem his winnings.
At the television station, a reporter asked Pete a bunch of questions, and she became more excited as she heard his answers. Finally, as Pete showed her the deed to the food company -- it was called BountyLand Foods Inc. -- the reporter seemed ready to burst and put Pete in front of the camera for a full-fledged interview. She said something about the stocks from the food company skyrocketing up in value just a few hours ago and seemed really excited to tell him. Pete just kept grinning without understanding why anyone would care about a bunch of rockets and answered all her questions, finally agreeing to appear on some TV show called Mandelovia Today.
After his TV appearance, Pete was swarmed with people who wanted to be near him, mostly lawyers, beautiful women and investor types. Pete just went along for the ride and enjoyed it while it lasted, fully expecting things to change for the worse very quickly.
Somehow, though, he had ended up in a lush hotel with three very beautiful and very scantily clad women in a hot tub. Pete had never had it so good.
And that's when the dream went sour and turned into a nightmare. Some kind of weird voice came out of nowhere and began talking to him, trying to drive him crazy, and then the shooting began, and everything went black. That must've been when the nightmare ended, Pete figured. It had to have all been a dream. Nobody could be that lucky.
He sat up on the soft hospital bed and idly wondered where he was. That was when the door opened, and the man from his nightmare came in to get him.
"AAAAAAHHHH! Geddawayfromme!" Pete said, cringing from the big, imposing man.
"Easy there, pal," said Chief Arnold Bobowsky. "Nobody's gonna hurt ya."
"Where da hell am I?" Pete said, finding himself in a state of confusion as he realized that the man he saw in his nightmare last night was real. The thought flashed through his mind in a split-second: Did that mean that everything else in his dream was real, too?
"You're among friends, Mr. Glover, I assure you. We only want to help you."
"N-nooo... geddaway!"
"Look, Mr. Glover -- Pete -- all I want to do is bring you to meet the Doc."
Pete wasn't listening; he just kept backing off, again craven with terror.
"And the Doc's gonna take real good care of you, Pete. He'll get you some food, and some clothes, and maybe even a mug of beer or two."
"B-beer?" Pete repeated, suddenly calming down.
"Yeah, beer... you like beer, don't you, pal? We're gonna give you alllll the beer you want, but you're gonna have to come with me, all right?" Bobowsky signaled to his security men, who held guns in their hands, to back off.
"Beer..." Pete said again, his eyes glazing over as he allowed himself to be led out of the room and down the brightly lit hallway.