"The gate is closing!" screams the henchman,

"The gate is closing!" screams the henchman, kicking his legs giddily as he waves his arms in a triumphant stance. He is probably even more excited than the actual participants.

I was the last one in as they shackled us to the ride. The henchman pulled a lever. "Welcome to Medieval World!" The floor dropped from under us and I lost a contact.

I fell into a pit of brown rats, vectors for the Black Death. Later, I was eating rat mcnuggets when I felt a huge buboe erupting in my armpit. I felt a pilgrimage to Rome was the

only course under the circumstances. I joined a crowd of other pligrams and soon we were all buboeing down to ask for a healing miracle from Pope Johny the 12th. Seeing our

distress, the Pope blessed us immediately upon arrival, but it didn't seem to help. Our circumstances were still unfortunate. The future looked bleak, so I decided it was time to

contact Satan to ask him how to change our situation around. I figured that, with the Pope's blessing still active, we would be able to get away with our souls intact.

matter. We were literally melting into black slag. "Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles," the two-dimensional bow tie-wearing imp chuckled, tipping his hat. "I've gotta

pay my debts, because I always pay my debts." Z waltzed onto the scene and put new perspective to our suffering. I had to X Y Z did what he did, and Z replied that three's company.

But four's a crowd and sometimes your debts come back to haunt you. The moral of the story is, Z is for zombie and they like to be paid, in brains preferably.