Writing at the launch

Last night we launched issues 3 and 4, and as usual we did some improvised writing using prompts from our guests. I feel like it actually was the best crop of improv writing in our three launches. So for your enjoyment, here is the little story I wrote last night in about 20 minutes (that's so you won't be too harsh on it), using the prompt "À la claire fontaine" and "Not strip poker but STRIP MONOPOLY".

Somewhere at the edge of town, at the bottom of a dark, cheerless alley, lies a bar. The bricks of its facade crumble and fall, but they still support a blinking neon sign, like a one-eyed drunk in the mist. In fact, a one-eyed drunk often falls asleep under it in the small hours of the morning, when all that's left on the streets are the damned and the graveyard-shifters.
The bar is called "À la claire fontaine", though there's nothing clear about what happens behind the brick facade and the one-eyed sign. The owner once said it was named after his favorite childhood song, but it's hard to believe Joe Gillitz ever had a childhood.
Most nights, he sits behind the bar, as drunk as the few clients who still patronize his crumbling establishment. Most nights, that is, until two weeks ago. That's when Gillitz launched his new game int the backroom. He says it didn't cost him much, just the board and the dice, which he bought second hand, but everybody knows he must have paid the girls. And they're definitely not second hand.
That's was I was thinking that night when I walked the backroom for the third time that week.
I've been told before by some quack psychologist, or maybe it was my dealer, that I have an addictive personality, i.e. I tend to get hooked on pretty much everything. I'd never believed it until now. Because to get hooked on strip Monopoly, I agree you have to be missing a few braincells. Or be very lonely. Both, I guess.
One of the girls smiled at me as I sat down in one of the plastic chairs around the board and selected the shoe. I did notice something strange in her eyes, like her pupils weren't really round or something, but at the time I didn't really care. I should have, though. 'Cause it turns out, Gillitz didn't pay for these girls. No. They don't need money. Or food, for that matter. At least, not our kind of food.
That's right. I said earlier I was missing a few brain cells. Where do you think I lost them?


Vincent Mackay