This letter has been sent to you for good luck. The original copy is in New England. It has been around the world nine times. The luck has now been sent to you. You will receive good luck within four days of receiving this letter, provided you send it back out. This is no joke. You will receive it in the mail. Do not send money as fate has no price. Do not keep this letter. It must leave your hands within 96 hours. An R.A.F. officer received £2.00. Joe Elliott received $3.25 but lost it because he broke the chain. While in the Philippines, Gene Welch lost a pack of cigarettes six days after receiving the letter. He failed to circulate the letter. However, his wife found it and circulated it.  She won a set of “My Three Sons” gum cards. A hospital worker in Bogota received the letter and failed to circulate it. She broke a shoelace the next day. Please make 500 copies of the letter and send them to all your friends and business associates and see what happens in four days. The chain comes from Sri Lanka. It was written by a genius who worked in the marketing department at Xerox.

TO YOU
FROM A
FRIEND.

Nothing feels like a fresh pack of cigarettes. Nothing like a woman’s kiss. And nothing like a baseball bat across the occipital lobe.

Two hours later, I regained consciousness and staggered my way to the stinking third story apartment in the Bengali quarter where Madame Stolchnya held her Druidic ceremonies.

When I got there, four crimson-robed acolytes—aspiring theologians—were wrapt in religious debate concerning atman, asceticism and the role of plastic explosives in a twentieth-century evangelical movement. I limped past them disguised as a plaster replica of Botticelli’s Venus.

I lifted the hem of the arras just in time to view the spectacle of Mme. Stolchnya standing with dagger raised above the prone figure of an eleven year old boy. He was naked, tied to an ordinary office desk. He appeared to be in a drugged condition. A ring of aromatic leaves surrounded the base of his erect penis and there were strange red circles like weals at numerous points on his papery white skin.

“Sorry,” I said, and ducked back outside. The sundial by the window read two-thirty. I consulted my appointment book and realized I hadn’t been expected ’til three. It was then I cursed myself for not having brought my crossword puzzle.

They used to tell stories. First you had to get undressed. They made you lie down on the carpet. Then, while the others you were with tried to calm you, the leader would pry open your eyes with his fingers.

There would be an eyedropper that contained a very dilute acid and they’d let a drop fall into each eye.

After about an hour your eyes would clear, and you could swear that everything looked entirely different. There’s a beauty and a unity to everything. Objects are themselves and, at the same time, they’re not.

I was invited to participate in one of their ceremonies. I stripped to my briefs, took a conch shell in my left hand (to summon help if needed), and some ceremonial cloth in my right (said to symbolize the Golden Fleece of Jason). They laid a drape over me and administered the medication.

That’s how the officers found him, the next morning. There were no other people around. The “conch shell” turned out to be a cheap cordless telephone, the “ceremonial cloth” an ordinary bathroom towel. The subject underwent an extensive battery of tests, but no physiological effects were evident. He never, however, completed the final project for his Masters’ degree.