text: [Themes: Comedy, Comedy, dog, ghost]
  
  > Look around
  The sumptuous entrance lobby of the Grand Poseidon Hotel. Aquamarine lights play over the leather couches and rich mahogany paneling, making the whole room look like it's underwater. Outside to the west, you can see the hustle and bustle of a Saturday night in downtown Seattle.
  
  In the center of the room is an enormous fish tank. To the north is the Neptune Lounge, which is crawling with the fuzz, to the south, past the front desk, is the hotel office, and a hallway leads east. A crystal column houses the elevator.
  
  A mermaid is swimming lazily around in the tank.
  
  The mermaid blows a few bubbles and  watches them drift towards the top of the tank.
  
  > look at the desk
  It stretches along the southern side of the lobby. You can see the hotel office past it.
  
  > go to the east
  As you step into the corridor, a faint shimmer passes across your field of vision, as if you've just looked through a slightly warped window. For a second, just one sweet second, you can almost taste champagne.
  
  An east-west hall lined with pillars. Gilt-edged paintings decorate the walls.
  
  The hotel lobby lies to the west, and the scent of lightly chlorinated salt water drifts in from the east.
  
  > examine the paintings
  Subjects include sea serpents, sultry sirens, and ships being dragged to the inky depths.
  
  > Go east
  The corridor seems to stretch as you walk down it. You feel your
  mouth filling with something cold, but delicious. It's gin! Sweet, succulent gin! Only you can't seem to swallow it...or spit it out...and it's freezing. Your cheeks are already starting to feel numb.
  
  A woman in an old-fashioned dress, the sort your spinster-est
  spinster aunt would wear, is walking beside you, eyes fixed on the end of the hall. But the hall keeps going. And going. And your cheeks feel as if they're going to shatter from the cold. The woman whips her head around and fixes you with a stare, a pair of slate-gray eyes nailing into your own baby blues - and now you're stumbling out into the warm, steamy air of the natatorium.
  
  The woman walks north, her back to you, and strides into the gentlemen's changing room just as bold as anything.
  
  A huge room lined with pearly tiles. A stepped series of circular baths are laid out like tidepools, but one large saltwater pool dominates the room. The eastern wall is painted with a bright, sunny beach scene.
  
  The ladies' changing room is to the south, while gents have to head north.
  
  > look at the pool
  A bubbling pool of hot saltwater.
  
  > go south
  It's steamy and musty, with slick floors. Lockers line the walls.
  
  You can see a stinky stocking here.
  
  > look at the stocking
  Whew! Smells like someone wore this to cut a rug on the hottest day of July after winning an onion-eating/bath-avoiding biathalon and then stuffed it in her brassiere for a month. Which is all by way of saying you've smelled fresher.
  
  > take it
  You pick it up gingerly between two fingers. Yeecch!
  
  > go to the north
  A huge room lined with pearly tiles. A stepped series of circular baths are laid out like tidepools, but one large saltwater pool dominates the room. The eastern wall is painted with a bright, sunny beach scene.
  
  The ladies' changing room is to the south, while gents have to head north.
  
  > Go north
  You give the joint the old once-over first, just to make sure nobody's watching, and then in you go.
  
  A snazzy locker room lined with gleaming, brand new lockers, each emblazoned with a burnished copper number.
  
  The woman is nowhere to be seen, but you can hear heavy breathing coming from one of the lockers - number 77.
  
  > open 77
  As soon as your fingertips brush the handle, the locker bursts beneath your fingers like an overripe melon in the sun, flooding your vision with
  
  purple suns hanging overhead. Neon squiggles slice across your eyes like razor worms. This world is cold and dry, and your tongue feels like paper.
  
  The woman stands before you, a single dark spot in the brilliance, growing as the light drains into it, until she's all you can see and you're not even sure if you see that other world at all. There is a single moment of perfect silence.
  
  Then she explodes.
  
  You see...things...dozens of creepy-crawly little things rushing toward you, crawling over you, wriggling across your skin like eels, and they feel like boneless dead things, but something about how they smell is appealing and familiar.
  
  1) Inhale.
  
  > 1
  [Inhale.]
  
  You inhale deeply as the things rush past you. Maybe a little too deeply. You feel dizzy. Then you feel the cement floor of the locker room smacking into the back of your head.
  
  You're dimly aware that people are standing over you, and thoughts drift through your mind - idle concerns like that you don't want people to think you're some wet dishrag who faints at the least little thing, and that you hope that the blood isn't ruining your new cloche, and that maybe you're dying.
  
  You feel strong arms around you and now you're looking up into the face of an angel carrying you off to heaven and apparently angels dress like elevator operators.
  
  And then it's off to Slumberland for who knows how long, but at least long enough to cart you to another room, because that's where you wake up. Specifically, you seem to be in a dark room, alone, lying on an uncomfortable cot made for someone shorter than you, lighter than you, and a whole lot less picky about where they park their person than you are.
  
  1) Stand up.
  
  > 1
  [Stand up.]
  
  You haul yourself up, feeling like you've just gone ten rounds with Jack Dempsey after ten rounds of Jack Daniels. Unfortunately, the pleasant alcoholic haze is fading like a dream, while the just-got-the-back-of-my-head-smashed-in haze seems to be making itself right at home.