I thought I'd like to contribute a special pre-Halloween fortune-ghoul spook story about Atlantic City destiny, inspired by Leprechaun (Bluewater Comics) art/storyboards/media, and set in Atlantic City (A.C.) because of its dynamite 'American detention' symbolism. Good Halloween friends,






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A varied group of individuals embark on an Atlantic City ('AC') adventure in the summertime, before the autumn ***************** season kicks off that year! The folks are all from the University of Notre Dame, whose storied Fighting Irish ***************** team anticipate a terrific season, giving these campus community members a chance to predate the festivity anticipated for Halloweentime and revel in some good-old gambling on the East Coast. They take a chartered Peter Pan bus to New Jersey and arrive in the Boardwalk City of games, food, ocean, and sun (and fireworks too). The group includes some professors, some students, and some administration members. The group outing is not meant to create unified social activities, so when the bus arrives, the members/participants decide to part in ways conducive to the personalized summertime experience they seek in the Boardwalk City (AC). Most of the professors are together singly, though there's a couple of Notre Dame students accompanying them for some reason. Otherwise, the students band together in usual 'cafeteria-table' contoured social groupings, and the administration members are simply by themselves and comprise their own AC group. The AC Notre Dame bunch are in for the surprise of a lifetime during this pre-autumn visit to the beach******** city of the East Coast, for there's a ghoulish evil leprechaun (folkloric midget-sized Irish sprite-of-mischief) named Lubdan who brings with him a coveted and enticing pot-'o-gold and seeks to deliver this otherwise representative American 'association' to the brink of hell and detour the outing to the canonical 'Boardwalk City' of dreams.

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The administration group includes 5 people who dart to the ********games area after checking into the AC hotel where Notre Dame has fixed a group-rate for the team-outing this summer. The administration group make their way to the roulette and blackjack and slots areas and begin to have fun with the tokens/moneys they've brought with them, anticipating a fun AC games experience that first day of the week-long outing on the East Coast. They rather appreciated the comforts of the Peter Pan bus which brought them to AC, specially detoured for this Notre Dame field-trip prior to the anticipated exciting Fighting Irish football season. While they're playing games and such in the casino area(s), Lubdan, the evil leprechaun, lures one of the 5 administration members by showing him one of his shiny gold-coins, claiming he has much more hidden in that casino's store-room closet, and the foolish member follows Lubdan into the closet and sees the evil one grab a large knife-like object which he uses to puncture the daring individual's wrist, causing fainting...and eventually death.

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Lubdan then plots to sabotage the AC outing of the professor-group which includes 2 students from Notre Dame too. This group has decided to take time to go swimming in the hotel pool, before playing in the casino. This group notices that they're the only ones in the pool area. Lubdan once again approaches one single member of this group, a student, who's decided to walk into the uninhabited sauna closed-door area for private steam-bath amenity, and while the student is inside, Lubdan covers his nostrils with his tight evil strong fingers until the unfortunate student unfortunately goes unconscious from deprivation. Lubdan decides then he'll just leave the student in the sauna room to 'melt away' unless some other person happens to walk into that uninhabited sauna area and rescue the darkened student! Lubdan says to himself in an eerie voice, "I'm worthy of great cinema...and perhaps some nice gambler's-delight art posters to highlight my contributions to civilization dungeon."

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Finally, the student-group, composed only of Notre Dame students (no profs/admins), decide to just go walk on the Boardwalk after checking into their shared or single hotel rooms in AC. The students are walking along the Boardwalk and are enjoying cotton-candy when Lubdan decides to strike! The ghoulish evil leprechaun is under their feet unknown to them, and he peers up at them through the streaks of AC sunshine shining down through the planks of the wooden Boardwalk. Lubdan decides to take one of his darts in his pocket which is laced with a poison. He then takes out one more of his ominous coins from his dark-magic pot-'o-gold and throws it up over the edge of one of the Boardwalk planks for the walking students to discover, and when the fateful student who decides they're the one to grab the oddly-laid fortune item, Lubdan pokes the finger of the student with his poison-dart, and the student eventually dies, after going unconscious and being taken to the AC hospital ER! After this eerie and dark outing to sunny AC on the East Coast (USA), the Notre Dame group departs sadly on their return Peter Pan bus back towards the campus in Indiana. On the bus-ride back, one of the professors stands up and tells the 'lucky survivors' of their depression 'Lubdan ordeal' that what they'll remember most from this field-trip is, "No one escapes the reality of world-disorientation."

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)