"I am in the business of making your wildest dreams come true"

He was drunk, he thought and then he reasoned that if he was sober enough to realize that he was drunk, then he wasn't drunk enough. Again, he thought that if he could reason that way, it was one more proof of the fact that he wasn't drunk enough. Yet again, he deliberated, if he could think about how he reasoned about his realization, which doesn't come easy to many even when they are sober, he wasn't drunk enough, may be not at all. Then he considered that since the realization that he had - namely, of being drunk - won't come to sober people anyway, since that wouldn't be an issue for them since they hadn't been drinking in the first place, his deliberation was all futile. However, if his deliberation was futile, then his consideration was futile too and if his consideration was futile, everything was pointless. This made him sad and helped him cement his decision that he might as well have another drink anyway.

There was nothing unusual about this particular night for him yet - other than the fact that his brain registered an unusual amount of introspective activity. However, since the introspection's sole purpose was to justify his decision of buying yet another drink - something he did using different justification-tactics everyday - even this wasn't very out of the ordinary. He was the usual solitary figure at the bar who spoke little - and that too, only to the bartender to say thanks when he suggested what drink he ought to have next. Little did he know how different this night would turn out to be from the others.

The bartender was taking the last orders - it was now late. The man staggered out of the bar - one half of his brain was signalling that this was a definite sign of inebriation while the other was telling the aforementioned half to shut up and mind its own business. Since the two halves of his brain were arguing with each other, it was that time in his life when he was the most useless creature intellectually.

Probably it was because the arguing halves of his brain rendered his mental faculties zero that he didn't register any surprise when he saw a black cat holding a beer bottle in its paws. He just blinked at it.

"Darn, it's over," said the cat (another phenomenon he should have been surprised at had he held possession of his brain's powers). The cat turned the beer bottle upside down and shook it to see if there was any more beer in it. Then, very unexpectedly, *WHACK* - it hit itself on the top of its head. The beer bottle broke into smithereens. And oh, the cat died.

This, apparently, was enough distraction for the two halves of his brain and they stopped arguing. They vaguely recalled that the death of a cat as a result of the lack of an alcoholic beverage sounded familiar - may be the sub-conscious in them had dreamed about something like this sometime in the past. But wasn't this weird then?

The man felt really confounded now.

Just then, the bartender breezed by on his bicycle, grinning, his teeth seeming even whiter than usual due to the eerie white street light. He said just one line - "I am in the business of making your wildest dreams come true. Can you beat that?"