A Terribly Strange Bed story
Charles Faulkner, a young American gambler in Paris, should have left the casino after striking it lucky. Why the devil did he agree to sleep in the casino's guest bed? This was to be the most horrible night he had ever lived. Directed by: Alan Cooke. Story by: Anthony Fowles, based on the story by Wilkie Collins.
10 total · 1 choice · 5 major · 4 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| what if I were in a tight spot | choice | Charles made an ill-advised decision to spend the night in the guest bedroom of a seedy gambling house after winning a sizable sum of money at the roulette wheel. He was soon distressed to find that he was locked inside the room. After turning in for the night, he was nearly crushed like a grape in his sleep by the titular bed, which his captors operated as a kind of press, before making a harrowing escape out of the window. |
| friendship | major | Charles and George were fast friends. George walked out of the seedy gambling house on Charles because he feared for his safety after Charles won a sizable sum at the roulette wheel. The story concluded with George returning to the scene where he saved Charles from explaining his way out of a tricky situation. |
| gambling | major | The story is premised on a young American gambler, named Charles, winning big at the roulette wheel in a seedy Paris gambling house. |
| greed for riches | major | Lemerle hatched a devious plot to crush Charles like a grape in his sleep and steal the sizable sum that he'd won at the roulette wheel. |
| inebriated interaction | major | Charles simultaneously drunk himself silly and won a huge amount of money. A point of the story, nearly spelled out by Lemerle, is the ease with which a drunk can be parted from his possessions. |
| life in late modern France | major | The story is set in post-Napoleonic restoration Paris and makes a point about showcasing what nightlife in that city might have been like. |
| honor | minor | The war veteran Lemerle feigned outrage at being offered charity for helping Charles recover some coins from a putative thief. Once, he said, that offer would have made him insist upon a duel. |
| law enforcement | minor | The story ended with a police officer arriving on the scene of Charles' harrowing escape from a seedy gambling house. |
| reliable streak of luck | minor | Charles refused to depart from the roulette table because he was on an implausible winning streak. Fate proved him right, in the story. |
| what if I suddenly got some free money | minor | Charles won a sizable sum at the roulette wheel in a seedy Paris gambling house. The amount of money was sufficiently large that he attracted the attention of some unsavory characters who plotted to murder him in the middle of the night and take the money for themselves. The story didn't much explore what he planned to do with this windfall. |