18+ Only. Play Responsibly.
€61.10 sat beneath the reels.
Smokey stood to the right holding a champagne bottle.
He had contributed almost nothing.
That was important.
Blond forelock.
Curled moustache.
Black sequined jacket.
White gloves.
One eyebrow lowered with the permanent confidence of a raccoon who had discovered bottle service and immediately stopped opening bins manually.
Behind him, the nightclub glowed blue and purple.
Bottles covered the shelves.
A neon crown hung over the bar.
The VIP entrance waited on the right.
On the reels, several floor squares were still glowing after a rainbow had turned a perfectly ordinary €1.00 spin into a minor asset seizure.
Smokey smiled.
Of course he smiled.
It was his building.
The evening had started with considerably less gold.
Le Clubber opened on six reels and five rows beneath a sign large enough to inform several neighbouring streets that subtlety had been refused entry.
Pink sunglasses.
VIP cards.
DJ controllers.
Champagne bottles.
A disco ball.
Letters.
Smokey himself remained outside the grid, dressed as though he had personally invented Saturday night and was still collecting royalties.
I selected €1.00.
Five Ks connected first.
They vanished.
New symbols dropped.
€0.10.
The club flashed purple.
Smokey raised the bottle slightly.
Ten cents had apparently qualified for table service.
A few spins later, six pairs of pink sunglasses joined across the grid.
They disappeared.
The squares underneath them lit.
Gold borders.
Marked positions.
Then nothing else happened.
No Rainbow.
The spin ended with several illuminated patches on the dance floor and no explanation for why the sunglasses had been allowed to reserve seating after leaving.
Next spin.
Fresh floor.
Fresh guests.
Smokey had wiped the table.
Two FS symbols landed.
One high on the left.
Another near the bottom right.
They sat there glowing while a champagne bottle occupied the middle.
No third FS.
The two symbols disappeared at the end.
Smokey kept the champagne.
This happened more than once.
Two FS symbols.
Then one.
Then two again.
The nightclub kept assembling most of an invitation and withholding the address.
Meanwhile the ordinary clusters continued.
DJ pads.
VIP cards.
Sunglasses.
Once, five champagne bottles connected and vanished for €0.30.
A winning nightclub had successfully removed the drinks.
That seemed operationally backwards.
The Bonus Buy button waited in the corner.
I ignored it.
Smokey already owned a bar, a VIP room, a neon crown and trousers that almost certainly contained hidden pockets.
He could fund his own entertainment.
The session drifted slightly downward.
Then the €1.00 spin arrived.
Eight pink sunglasses connected across the lower half.
Not in a neat line.
They sprawled through adjacent squares as though eight guests had dropped their eyewear simultaneously after somebody switched the lighting from blue to aggressively magenta.
€0.70.
Every winning pair vanished.
The squares behind them lit gold.
New symbols dropped.
VIP cards landed into the gaps.
Six of them connected.
MEMBERS ONLY.
Purple rectangles everywhere.
The cards flashed and disappeared for another €0.40.
More squares turned gold.
The dance floor now had eleven distinct marked positions scattered through the grid.
Smokey leaned beside the reels with his bottle.
Eleven pieces of nightclub floor had acquired VIP status.
The guests responsible had already left.
Fresh symbols dropped.
No third cluster.
Then the Rainbow landed.
It sat near the centre.
Bright.
Cheerful.
Utterly inappropriate for a nightclub being operated by a raccoon who looked capable of charging the rainbow for cloakroom use.
The winning sequence had finished.
The Rainbow activated.
Every marked square opened.
The regular symbols disappeared from those positions.
Coins appeared underneath.
Bronze.
Silver.
Gold.
A Four-Leaf Clover.
And one Bucket of Gold.
The nightclub had spent several spins pretending its main economy involved sunglasses.
It had been hiding currency underneath the floor.
A Bronze Coin showed x1.
Another carried x2.
One Silver Coin had x5.
Another showed x10.
The Gold Coin displayed x25.
Forty-three times the stake already sitting under the dance floor.
Then the Clover woke up.
It was beside the x5 Silver Coin.
The leaves spun.
x2.
The Silver Coin changed from x5 to x10.
Forty-eight times the stake.
Smokey still had not moved.
He watched a plant double money underneath his nightclub while holding champagne with the relaxed expression of someone who considered this normal weekend maintenance.
Then the Bucket activated.
It sat among the revealed squares, white and gold, packed to the rim with coins.
The Bucket collected the values.
x1.
x2.
x10.
x10.
x25.
Forty-eight.
The value stored inside it became x48.
The nightclub now contained a bucket worth €48 because a rainbow had opened the floor and a clover had interfered with one silver coin.
This was the strongest guest at the party.
No sunglasses.
No VIP card.
No DJ controller.
A bucket.
Once it had finished collecting, the remaining marked squares opened again.
The previous loose coins disappeared from those positions.
Fresh ones were revealed.
Bronze x1.
Bronze x2.
Bronze x4.
Silver x5.
No new Clover.
No second Bucket.
Twelve more times the stake remained around the stored x48 Bucket.
The chain stopped.
At the end of the spin, the current Coins and the Bucket were counted.
x12 in loose Coins.
x48 sitting inside the Bucket.
x60.
€60.00.
Add the €0.70 sunglasses and €0.40 VIP-card clusters that had started the whole incident.
€61.10.
Smokey’s nightclub had converted eight pairs of sunglasses and six membership cards into a rainbow-operated floor safe.
The disco ball had contributed nothing.
The champagne remained unopened.
The DJ controller had missed the entire event.
A bucket had outperformed the entertainment staff.
The total settled.
Coins sprayed across the screen.
Smokey lifted the bottle.
His moustache curled upward at the ends.
He looked exactly like a raccoon who had just watched a plant multiply silver and intended to take credit for ambience.
The next paid grid appeared.
Three Fs symbols?
No.
One.
A VIP card.
Two DJ pads.
Pink sunglasses.
Champagne.
The nightclub was already rebuilding the guest list.
I left the €61.10 where it belonged.
With me.
Smokey could keep the bottle, the rainbow and every member of the club who thought sunglasses counted as legal tender.
Super Golden Spins spins like it’s ghostwritten by disappointment.