Death Treat(n): Small cookie-like baked sweet goods, used to bribe the evil Death character into not kicking your Character's Rear End in the old Gauntlet Video Game, Unfortuently (for the Treats, and the players) these were entirely scrapped from the game to make room in the limited memory of the system for the now famous "Elf Needs Food Badly" line.

Atleast, that is my story and I'm sticking to it.

"Bless it all, Choronzon! That's seventy-eight heroic adventurers this week! Am I not feeding you enough souls? Do I not make myself the very bane of your existence? Do you not feel pain, agony, exquisite torture at the sound of my voice?"

"Yes, yes! O, Prince of Darkness, O, ruler of dead, collector of impure souls, it isn't us letting them through!"

"I don't want to know why it's not your fault, I want to hear what the Heaven do you plan to do about it!"

"Mazzzter, Dark Lord, Most Lowly... Don't bless us! It's not our fault, not this time. We haven't let one through since Theseus! We works our hardest, we does!"

"I don't want excuses, I want solutions! Work smarter, not harder!"

"But it's not us! It's that vile mutt, Cerberus!"

"Cerberus? Are you saying that my dog won't hunt?"

"I'm... I'm afraid so. Please, please don't punish us!"

"Be calm. Stop your sniveling. Does he say why he refuses the flesh of the foe?"

"He feels... he is no longer... I can't say it, my Dark Prince."

"Say it."

"He... feels he's no longer loved."

"No longer.... what? Ah, piss. Is it the first of the month again?"

"Yes...?"

"Fornicate me subtly with power tools and magical swords! Why do I always forget? Choronzon, do you wish to curry favor with me?"

"Yes, yes, always!"

"Here's ten bucks. Go up above, find a mini mart, and buy Cerberus some of those death treats."

I remember when I received my first death treat in the mail.

At first, I didn't think anything of it. "Jeez, just some smart-ass thinking his ass was smart," I said to myself.

Little did I know the depravity to which my secret dismirer would sink....

Soon, I started getting death treats every day. It didn't take long for me to figure out who was sending them. I decided it was time to report this to the police. "Someone has been sending me death treats," I say. "They're high in colesterol and contain too much sucrose for my simple pancreas to handle."

I don't like being treatened by anybody. But the police made some empty promises; there's not too much they can do anyway.

It was time to take matters into my own hands.

My will marshalled, I strode haughtily into that kitchen where I am King. And I reviewed my weapons.

• 2 cups Flour, white as bone.
• 2 eggs, cracked open like I would crack open that bitch's head.
• 1 cup sugar, brown as would be her pants after hit with the shocking awareness that this, indeed, would be the end of her.
• A teaspoon each of nutmeg and cinnamon, to taste.
• Enough water, lifeblood of which I was to rob her, to make the mix into a cohesive dough.

Spreading my arsenal to 1cm thickness, I cut out moulded images of death, hatred, and destruction, popping them out of the surrounding dough and placing them gently on a lightly greased cookie sheet.

I then placed the grim little manifestations of the utmost cruelty of which I was capable into the oven at 175 degrees Celsius, all the while contemplating how the heat of the oven was as the heat of that Hell to which I would send her. Finally, the instruments of my vile vodounic deed were complete.

Mixing together some icing sugar with some food colouring as black as her soul, and some water of course, I iced the devices of my will with further glyphs of sin and madness.

Then, I carefully, oh-so-carefully, placed each one side by side in a Tupperware container. Now, my attack was ready. I packed up into my car and drove to her lair.

"Hello, 'Grandma;' I loved the 'cookies'.... I just had to return the 'favour'...."

Who would have thought so much fun could come from a simple typo on redboot's homenode?

Death carries a scythe, but have you looked in his utility belt?

There's a bag of poisoned sweeties, a hacksaw blade for when he takes you to the fun-fair, a gimlet to bore a hole in the planking of the pedalo, a key to the lion cage at the Zoo, and real bullets that fit a paintball gun.

Then there's a trip to McDonald's the day after George W. Bush rescinds the minimum wage laws. There's controlled bungee-jumping into terrain, and hang-gliding over Iraqi airspace. A trip to the cinema to see anything with Robin Williams in it so you beg for euthanasia.