This was an assignment from American Studies. We had to write a Faustian legend: a type of story based on Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Fautus. It's a story where your protagonist exchanges something for something else, with disastorous results. In Dr. Faustus, the titular character sells his soul to the devil for a life less ordinary. Here's Luken's amusing rendering of the Faustian legend...

Once, while flipping through my mail, which I hate doing, I came upon one of those "Win $1,000,000!" deals. It had the standard formula: Tell the recipient they might already be a winner with a lot of typed enthusiasm, then give them suggestions and fantasies for what they could do with the money. Remind them they might already be a winner. Offer them free magazine subscriptions. Don't let them forget that they might already be a winner. Get them feeling good about their chances for winning (after all, they've already won), and finally, in very small print, write a warning which indicates that their actual chances for winning anything besides a pencil-sharpener calendar are as good as the sun's chances for exploding. Which is better than one might think, though still not very probable. But I was working at a convenience store at the time, so I filled it out and sent it in anyway. If I remember correctly, the two magazines I subscribed to were Computer Gaming World and Trucks, Guns, and Wrestling, the former to read, the latter to put on my table to convince visitors that I was, in fact, a male member of the human species. Not that I had much company anyway, or that the company I did have would read a magazine like T, G, and W. But I schemed nonetheless.

It had been a boring day at work. The most exciting part of my day so far had been proudly informing a customer about our new 2-for-1 deal on bottles of sauerkraut, and I was ready to watch some TV and unwind. Assuming that the day's mail was just the normal assortment of bills, eviction notices, and calls for jury duty, I went to throw it out. But just before the papers left my hand, something caught my eye. On the corner of one of the envelopes, I saw the logo for the company in whose million-dollar competition I was in. Dumping the rest (God, do I hate mail), I went to open the envelope while relaxing in the lawn-chair I had dragged inside for a place to sit. Here was where the turning point of my life happened. I had won! There, in my hand, was an actual check for one million dollars! And despite my careful, scrupulous inspection, there was no small print to be found! This is when I started hyper-ventilating. I, Luken Weaver, was now a millionaire!

Of course, being the fiscally responsible American I am, I immediately eschewed ideas like the stock market, savings accounts, and an actual house (at the time I was a tenant living in what was referred to by the construction plans as a walk-in closet) and bought a huge new TV. It was incredible. It took up the space where my bed used to be. It was in color! What I had thought were nature documentaries on ant-farms turned out to be football games! And thus I spent the next week in a blissful world of thirty inches and over two hundred channels. Eventually, I realized that not having a bed was cramping my style (also referred to as the "spinal cord") and moved to a bigger dwelling.

I was in for a surprise when, upon going out on my weekly trip to the mailbox, I discovered that it was crammed. There was so much mail the postal workers actually had to drop mail around my mailbox it was so stuffed. My head was spinning from all the pre-approved credit card offers and special deals on purchases. I soon had to adjust my mail schedule from weekly to daily. Apparently, when you bought stuff that was actually worth something, you had to take care of the bills or some burly guys in janitor's uniforms would try to repossess it. I actually started getting stuff in the mail, not just letters. Among these little gifts were a set of fountain pens, a convenient letter-opener, and a pencil-sharpener calendar. There was also a plastic, cubic, blue thing that, no matter how hard I tried, I could not identify. Among all this hectic postal activity, I came to the realization that mail was important, and I resolved myself to actually paying attention to it, hate it as I may. This was a mistake. Soon, I became overwhelmed with mail. My entire day was spent paying bills, filtering through special offers, and, in my spare time, vainly trying to identify the blue thing. My mood for most of the day was decidedly unpleasant. I snapped at ladies on the street when they couldn't keep their babies quiet, I pushed over blind men and told them to watch where they were going, and I kicked homeless people when they weren't original enough to come up with a line other than, "Any spare change?"

I continued to become more and more agitated until, one horrid morning, I awoke to a scene more terrifying than any I could have come up with by my own imagination. The sea of letters in my house had taken on life! In some areas, the mail coalesced into nightmarish figures that attacked me. In others, individual envelopes sprouted arms and legs and grouped together into a gibbering horde of demonic postal delivery! I ran, but there was no escape. No matter where I turned there were hellish creatures waiting to consume my soul. And, during it all, there was a mysterious blue cube in the background, taunting me in a deep, baritone voice. It told me I would never get away. It had to be stopped…

Now I live here. It's a happy place. The whole thing is white and even the walls are soft. The people in white clothes tell me I tried to blow up the post office. That's a silly idea. I would never do that. Especially not now that I live here, where everything is oh so happy. I haven't seen a letter since I've been here, and whenever I start to have a nightmare about them the people in white clothes come in and put stuff in me that makes it go away. I like the people in white clothes. They're nice. Except for one thing. One day, they came in and put the Blue Thing in the room! They said it was so they could "observe my reactions." I make sure to stay on the opposite side of the room from the Blue Thing. It's my only company