A letter from the future :

The first time I met Jules Wickley he was slinking around a small trading port in East Cambodia, posing as a merchant from the far east. He was indeed a merchant of sorts, although he mostly just sold bad junk to sailors. There was no getting around the fact that Jules was an evil man. His fiercely sharp features seemed to tip off even poor appraisers of character to this. There was always a strange distantness in his eyes, and outside of talking business he would say very little of substance . . . That is until around his ninth beer.

We were sitting by ourselves in a booth in a local establishment known as the "Red Barrel," when he told me a story about the four Shamans he tried to sell his soul to. The first three were all he fakes he insisted, and they each paid him handsomely in valuable black gold, that is good old fashioned Turkish poppy juice. Souls are considered very powerful entities by the ports indigenous peoples. Jules continued his story, explaining that the fourth Shaman he attempted this scam on was in fact a man of great vision and instantly saw through it. The Shaman laughed at Jules sales pitch. He found such greed genuinely amusing. The fourth Shaman's actions were apparently a mystery to Jules, but having spent nearly the entirety of an evening in Wickley's company, I fully understood them. The Shaman had seen what was now clear to me . . . That Jules Wickley was a man with no soul.

I intentionally lost track of the bastard for years until his name turned up while I was doing research for a potentially huge story. You see what I was slowly uncovering were details of a secret international tank drag racing complex located in the heart of the Gaza strip. The facilities were used for top-secret pissing competitions between rival nations. For instance, it is possible to actually trace the momentum shift in the cold war that led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union to the development of the Abram's twin turbo DE-17. That US Tank beat the Soviets older Veroblaster model by more then five tenths of a second in a 1988 race. At that time it was immediately clear to all present who the true Super Power was.

Anyway, my sources tell me that last January a Dutch Tank, the Tolxer mark four, set a new world tank speed record at 186 miles an hour. Members of the US intelligence community were shaken; how could they contend with these maverick Dutch? This is where Jules comes in. You see, in South Africa he had come upon plans for a new higher-output type of jet engine. He bartered several very dangerous and exotic drugs for the plans, and quickly applied for a patent. It was then that members of the CIA came upon plans for the engine, which they believed could be used on a tank. Thinking he was the engine's inventor, the US government granted him the title of Colonel and put him on a military pension [four of them to be exact], all in exchange for his expertise. But Jules would only collect two months worth of payments from those pensions before his demise. An Unidentified "terrorist" [a term often used to distract attention from covert operations related to the existence of the Gaza racing strip] drove a van full of explosives into a building in down town Gaza that was housing the US's brand new Jet-Tank. The blast destroyed everything, including a one Colonel Jules Wickley, who was sleeping soundly in his second floor office at the time.

The death of such a truly evil man does not happen often, and it left the Universe with severely unbalanced karma. Order was quickly restored however, as a truly good man, Pope Benedict XVI, died three hours later of pneumonia after an eleven-year pontificate.

Brian Posehn, perhaps best known for his credit as "Additional Voice" in Disney's feature length animated classic "Brother Bear," awoke on an empty beach located in the outskirts of Los Angeles. Disheveled, he splashed water on his trade mark scrubby face then began to pray. Suddenly the world around him fell silent, and then mere seconds later in a rather overly grand entrance complete with gongs, Death incarnate appeared. "Wait a moment," Posehn pleads, but Death is quick in his reply "You all say that, but I give no respite." Brian is on the spot now, he has to think at an excruciatingly fast pace as his time on Earth is rapidly winding down...

And then he had it, in a stroke of pure genius that was perhaps attributable to the fact he had seen a certain movie about a bogus journey fourteen times, he had found his reply. "You play chess, do you not?" Death was caught off guard, as Posehn continued, "I have seen it in paintings." Death conceded that he did in fact play, and proceded to produce a board from under his cloak. The rules were simple: To the winner went Brian's life. Posehn then shuffled a pawn of each color behind his back and Death, rather appropriately, choose the hand containing the black pawn. With his mortal soul on the line, Brian would go first.

He advanced his queen-side bishop's pawn two spaces to initiate the English opening. Death responded quickly by advancing his king pawn two spaces, playing a reverse Sicilian defense. Brian is fucked. He knows it, and he knows it because he has no idea what the English opening is, let alone the reverse Sicilian defense. A mere thirteen moves later it is evident that Death is in control, as he wins a rook and crushes Poshn's defenses. But wait, the Dark One acted with too much hast, a miscalculation, perhaps born of arrogance. Regardless, staring Brian Posehn in the face was a blatant loophole, a way out... a move that would force a stalemate. Bishop to D-5, check.

Stunned, Death acknowledged the draw and consulted his handy pocket manual for what to do next. Brian would never forget the last thing Death said to him: "Well, uh... You're technically immortal now." A fairly crappy last line, Posehn would later claim that "Keep on rocking in the free world," was in fact the final thing Death said before he descended "on a dark stagecoach." But most folks just don"t believe old Brian's crazy tales.

Despite his immortality, Posehn eventually does cease to be on his 260th birthday when the sun unexpectedly blows up and takes out the entire solar system. As it turns out, God likes to answer one prayer a week as a mater of principle. He selects this prayer randomly, and grants it no matter what the outcome may be. Well on the day in question one Ronald J. Hauss was fed up with the world and more then anything else bored. He had no sympathy for the devil and wanted to go out with a bang. He got his wish.

A final note from the Author

Please insert this quote at the beginning or end of Posehn piece - Sven.

"And when the lamb had opened
The seventh seal...
There was silence in heaven about
the space of half an hour
And the seven Angels which
had the Seven Trumpets...
Prepared themselves to sound."