A Deal for the Ages

Bargaining for immortality is one thing, but what happens after that story ends?

Immortality had been spectacular until he got that paper cut.

It was in that moment he realized for the first time that the Deal hadn't included Invincibility in the Terms. If it had, he certainly wouldn't have been able to enjoy those first seven months of hard drinking and self-medicating. His body wouldn't have allowed him to get poisoned enough for the chemicals he was pouring down his throat the whole time to be worth it.

Now, the moment Mr. Abernathy, formerly of Abernathy, Barnum, and Klines, made the Deal with Azagnaoth, self-elected Crier of the Void, he was unaware of the full length and breadth of the Terms. There was no contract, no signing anything over, no blood or semen or fire or torture or other combination of those and other things even more unspeakable. The Demon didn't even make him put his mark on a dotted line.

If Mr. Abernathy was telling the truth, there was nary a handshake.

But it didn't matter if he was telling the truth or not, because Azagnaoth, the Devourer of Nations, Scourer of the Deep, was known to the Meso-Americans as "Xtlictlictxan," which in Mayan means "Big Fat Liar With Pants Eternally Aflame."

There comes a day, you see, when a man first realizes he's going to die, and this is the single most momentous instance in the life of that man. And when this man, poor Mr. Martin Abernathy, who only ever wanted to do his Dad proud, who spent years climbing the ladder and working hard to better himself and his family... when he was presented such a chewy deal, why wouldn't he take it?

But one day his wife walks out on him for Sally Anne and Mary Jane down the way, and his life turns south. He spent years trying to find something to make the hurt and the pain go away, and nothing could.

But he didn't want death. Since he was a kid, he always remembered the line his brother used to read to him from Tolkien,

"...still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green."

Now, Mr. Abernathy knew there was a whole lot of the world left to him. There were so many different leaves on so many different trees, so many different shades of blue that the sky paints on the face of the waters, so many millions of sunsets and moonrises to keep a different beautiful sheen over the whole thing every day...

...so many other fish in the sea.

So he did what any man would do when presented with an opportunity to right a wrong that's been perpetrated upon himself. He took a Deal.

He took a Deal for something that was not properly defined in a clear and understandable way, and as such, that Deal was wrongfully granted by the offering party. Had he known the true, dark depths that weren't anywhere in any fine print, he would never have agreed to it.

The first time he felt a pain that stung him hard enough to make him realize it was out of the ordinary, he knew, in no uncertain terms, that he was screwed.

And here he sits today, before you, nothing left of the planet he lived on, or the star that burned out and killed every other living person he ever knew or loved... nothing left of the galactic cluster he used to look out at every night as a boy, and sometimes wish upon.

Nothing left of his physical shell.

Ladies and Gentlemen and Otherwise of the Council of the Elder Ones, Mr. Martin Abernathy stands here before you a broken man, quite literally. And he's not alone. He's one of literally tens of thousands of others who have been scammed over the aeons out of their ability to experience life and death and time and joy and sorrow like every other person who wasn't presented with this hoax.

I suggest to you, good Representatives of the Parlamentum Pantheonis, to think about this poor man, who was only trying to fulfill his passion for life and vitality and adventure. A man who was confronted with a Deal made by an entity not part of any legal structure he was familiar with, who presented him with wild and unfounded promises in exchange for something that was not clearly defined.

Negate this fraudulent Deal, made by an entity who is the self-proclaimed Lord of Deceit, and return legal ownership of this man's soul so he can do with it what rightfully should have happened back when time was actually meaningful.

Thank you.

Author's Note

{Now go back and read the story like Bob Odenkirk / Saul Goodman playing Jesus}