Rude vibes and wasted work: A normal night at the Mint

We FINALLY got into the suite, and my attorney was immediately on the phone to room service, ordering four scalded sailcats, four bowls of razor-edged saw-salad, a gallon of Romulan ale and nine fresh grapefruits.

"Vitamin C!" he explained. "We'll need all we can get."

I agreed. By this time the drink was beginning to cut the acid and my hallucinations were down to a tolerable level. The room service waiter had a vaguely reptilian cast to his features, but I was no longer seeing huge pterodactyls swooping through the hotel's corridors, gliding effortlessly over vast pools of fresh blood.

My only problem now was a gigantic neon sign outside our window, blocking our view of space but in some ways providing an even more fascinating picture -- millions of colored balls of light running around a very complicated track, strange symbols & filligree, giving off a loud, hypnotic, mesmerizing hummmm....

"Look outside," I said.

"Why?" my attorney asked, puzzled.

"There's a big ... machine in the sky," I tried to explain, "...some kind of ... electric snake ... coming straight at us."
"Well, shoot it!" he said.

"Not yet," I said. "I want to study its habits."

He walked over to a corner and began pulling on a chain to close the drapes.

"Look," he said, the metallic chain links in his mouth adding a slight ringing tinge to his words, "you've got to stop all this talk about snakes and leeches and lizards and all that stuff. It's making me sick."

"Don't worry," I said.

"WORRY? Ghods, I almost went crazy down there in the bar. They'll never let us back in that place again -- not after your scene at the press table."

"What scene? ... Oh, you mean with the gila monsters? Oh, yeah, sorry about that. Bad craziness...."

"You goat-sucking bastard!" he shouted. "I left you alone for THREE MINUTES! You scared the SHIT out of those people! Waving that goddamned marlin spike around and yelling about reptiles! What the hell? You're lucky I came back in time! They were ready to call the cops! I said you were only drunk and that I was taking you up to your room for a cold shower. Hell, the only reason they gave us the press passes was to get YOU the hell out of there!"

Nessus finished lowering the drapes and began pacing around the suite nervously. "Ghods, that scene straightened me right OUT! I MUST have some drugs! What have you done with the mescaline?!"