Midnight at the Khazanian Regent Hotel, one of the fanciest, swankiest, and most lucrative hotel/casinos in existence. Many of the guests at the hotel lounge about one of the many bars that litter the casino floor, drinking away their sorrows, trying to forget that one bad gamble, that one bad one night stand, or that one bad child whose college fund was keeping them from having that one bad gamble of one bad one night stand. In saunters a small, stocky figure, adorning a top hat and tie. The small, stocky figure lifts itself on top of a stool at the bar, its eyes barely peering over the edge of the bar. "A martini," the figure says in a regal british accent, "shaken, stirred, I do not give a damn." The bartender, a youngish man barely out of bartending school, fixes the martini without a thought, and without even looking at the figure. The rest of the bargoers seemingly pay no heed to the rather dapperly-dressed penguin either. They continued to drink away their petty human problems. Save for one man. He wore a wrinkled buisness suit, unwashed in two days, begining to smell of sweat, alcohol, and depression. His view was fixed upon the penguin. He watched as the penguin drank down the martini, wiped his beak with a napkin, slapped a 10 dollar bill on the bar, and hopped down from the stool. As the penguin left the bar, it gave the man a look. Nothing more than a nonchalant glance. "That... almost made sense." the grizzled corporate exec commented. That night, the Khazanian Regent Hotel burned down. Remarkably, there was only one casualty. A since forgotten buisnessman/family man who had recently been laid off from his job... |
